PARIS: The world’s oceans have absorbed 60 per cent more heat than previously thought over the last quarter of a century, scientists said on Thursday, leaving Earth more sensitive still to the effects of climate change.
Oceans cover more than two thirds of the planet’s surface and play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth.
According to their most recent assessment this month, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say the world’s oceans have absorbed 90 per cent of the temperature rise caused by man-made carbon emissions.
But new research published in the journal Nature used a novel method of measuring ocean temperature.
It found that for each of the last 25 years, oceans had absorbed heat energy equivalent to 150 times the amount of electricity mankind produces annually. That is 60 per cent higher than previous studies showed.
Whereas those studies relied on tallying the excess heat produced by known man-made greenhouse gas emissions, a team of US-based scientists focused on two gases found naturally in the atmosphere: Oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Both gases are soluble in water, but the rate at which water absorbs them decreases as it warms.
By measuring atmospheric oxygen and CO2 for each year, scientists were able to more accurately estimate how much heat oceans had absorbed on a global scale.
“Imagine if the ocean was only 10 metres deep,” said Laure Resplandy, assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton and lead study author.
“Our data show that it would have warmed by 6.5 degrees Celsius every decade since 1991.” — AFP
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