Data From HMS Challenger Oceanographic Survey (1872) Show 1.1F Increase In Avg. Ocean Surface Temps

[hatrack]

In 1872 the HMS Challenger pulled out from Portsmouth, England to begin an unprecedented scientific expedition of the world's oceans. During its over three year journey the HMS Challenger not only collected thousands of new species and sounded unknown ocean depths, but also took hundreds of temperature readings—data which is now proving invaluable to our understanding of climate change.

Utilizing the temperature data from the HMS Challenger expedition and comparing it to contemporary temperatures, researchers writing in Nature Climate Change found that the oceans' surface— where marine warming is most intense—saw temperature rise on average by 0.59 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 135 years or so. This implies that oceanic temperatures have been rising for at least a century.

"The significance of the study is not only that we see a temperature difference that indicates warming on a global scale, but that the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed over the past 50 years," explains lead author Dean Roemmich, University of California San Diego physical oceanographer. "This implies that the time scale for the warming of the ocean is not just the last 50 years but at least the last 100 years."

Prior research has shown that 90 percent of the heat added to the atmosphere has ended up in the oceans, at least since the 1960s. Roemmich told LiveScience that this implies, "the ocean temperature is probably the most direct measure we have of the energy imbalance of the whole climate system." While the HMS Challenger took temperatures at over 300 stations with mercury, pressure, and resistance thermometers, today some 3,500 free-floating Argo robotic probes roll through the seas gathering temperature data.


EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0402-hance_oceans_hmschallenger.html

[Gman]

1. I don't know how significant that can be

when an El Nino has an oceanic temperature rise of over 1 - 1.5 C. If they only sampled over 3 years, that's a snapshot of that point in time, but I don't know how that can be a base to work from considering there are a great many variables that affect oceanic temperatures.

My personal theory is El Nino is caused by increased activity in volcanic vents on the ocean floor of the Pacific. Don't know if that's true or not, but El Nino is definitely not caused by global warming as we speak of it.

[intaglio]

2. Sea temperature in El Nino/La Nina events is not global

... although the weather effects are, additionally volcanic activity has damn all to do with either event. Essentially Nino/Nina events move a block of warm water from one side of the Pacific to the other and the waters where it used to be are cooler than the waters where it is.

The importance of the HMS Challenger data is that the temperatures were recorded around the world, not just locally on one side of the Pacific or the other.