The European Policy Centre in Brussels released a report late yesterday warning that the ocean is warming about 50 percent faster than two years ago. Their report compiled research presented at the Science Congress in Copenhagen in March. They estimate that recent observations are near the worst-case predictions of the 2007 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that the new estimates help to better explain the trend in sea level that has been observed in recent decades as most of the sea-level rise observed until recently has been the result of thermal expansion of seawater.
According to the authors of the report titled “Climate change: Global risks, Challenges & Decisons“, ocean temperatures are a better indicator of global warming than air temperature as the ocean stores more heat and responds more slowly to change. Findings indicate that the top 700 metres of have warmed by about 0.1 degrees over the past half century. The disconcerting aspect of that number is that well over half of the increase in ocean temperature has occured in the last 10 years which corresponds to approximately 15 to 20 times more heat going into the ocean than has gone into the atmosphere.
This report is another important piece of evidence that should be considered in the talks leading up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December.
