Hot Oceans

Most of the heat generated by greenhouse gases, 93% of it, is being absorbed by the oceans.  We immediately observe that warming has clearly not slowed down any as the deniers are trying to claim.  In fact, the heat in the ocean is accelerating, and has doubled since 1997, the year deniers claim warming has stopped.  This cannot be gotten around.  Global warming has not slowed at all.

Not only that, we are experiencing the consequences of this right now as the ocean heating has exacerbated the Godzilla El Nino that now has gripped the world, producing the warmest December in Europe, and droughts and starvation in Africa

December temperatures in London have been warmer than July’s. Scotland is balmier than Barcelona. Artificial snow covers European ski slopes. Africa faces its worst food crisis in a generation as floods and droughts strike vulnerable countries.

The CMIP5 multi-model mean ocean heat content change from 1865 to 2015 expressed as a percentage for 3 ocean depth layers. The gray bars indicate the 1-standard deviation uncertainty and the black triangles along the bottom denote simulated large volcanic eruptions (which disperse light-scattering sulfate particles). Gray triangles show the many unsimulated small & moderate volcanic eruptions after 2000. Image from Gleckler et al (2016).

The diagram also shows how pathetic are the impact of volcanoes.  Deniers sometimes claim that volcanoes are going to protect us, but you can see that while the volcanoes clearly do affect the ocean temperatures, they cause just little bumps in the rapidly accelerating increase in ocean heat.

Anyone who thinks that this surging ocean heat will be of little consequence to us on land needs to have any educational credentials they may have achieved revoked.