Warming, not cooling: three recent graphs that conclusively show the planet heating

Warming, not cooling: ocean heat content

One the myths peddled by the denial machine is that there has been a pause in warming. 

Indeed, Britain’s “nuttiest weather forecaster” Piers Corbyn is predicting a mini ice age. Jo Nova looked at the last year years of temperature data and concluded the world might have entered a cooling phase.

Of course, such claims are completely divorced from reality. Two recent studies and Australia’s experience over summer offer conclusive proof the planet is warming, and that we’re living in a changed climate.

No doubt many of you have already seen the study of ocean warming by Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Källén (2013) published in Geophysical Research Letters (DOI: 10.1002/grl.50382)

The elusive nature of the post-2004 upper ocean warming has exposed uncertainties in the ocean’s role in the Earth’s energy budget and transient climate sensitivity. Here we present the time evolution of the global ocean heat content for 1958 through 2009 from a new observational-based reanalysis of the ocean. Volcanic eruptions and El Niño events are identified as sharp cooling events punctuating a long-term ocean warming trend, while heating continues during the recent upper-ocean-warming hiatus, but the heat is absorbed in the deeper ocean. In the last decade, about 30% of the warming has occurred below 700 m, contributing significantly to an acceleration of the warming trend. The warming below 700 m remains even when the Argo observing system is withdrawn although the trends are reduced. Sensitivity experiments illustrate that surface wind variability is largely responsible for the changing ocean heat vertical distribution.

Put simply, global warming has been accelerating: 90% of global warming has been going into the oceans, heating them considerably.

Of course, there is the recent Marcott et.al paper looking at the last 11,500 years of temperature anomalies:

A new hockey stick

While Australia has just experienced the “Angry Summer“:

The oceans are warming at an alarming rate; temperature records are being smashed not just in Australia, but across the world; the present warming trend is unlike anything we’ve seen in thousands of years.

Of course, the denial machine has gone into overdrive ever more desperate attempts to cast doubt on the science.

Thus we’re left with a stark choice; accept the science, or believe the entire scientific community is lying.