Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences researchers have developed a statistical method to quantify important
ocean measurements from satellite data, publishing their findings in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
The systems
for ocean measurement under the aegis of GOOS were initially designed by the Ocean Observing System Development Panel, refined in the 1998 Action Plan for GOOS / GCOS, and further refined in the GCOS Implementation Plan.
Among the NSF - funded programs facing potentially severe reductions are clean energy research and development and the Ocean Observatories Initiative, an array of marine and seismic sensors scattered across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that is expected to provide some of the most
detailed ocean measurements to date (SN: 10/19/13, p. 22).
After that, Cane and his colleague Stephen Zebiak developed a statistical model of El Nino's dynamics, based on wind and
ocean measurements in the Pacific.
It might include — Surface temperature records (as above)-- Atmospheric data: temp, GHG levels, etc — Ice coverage and ice depth —
Ocean measurements temperature, acidity, sea level, currents — etc...
The OOI is a long - term, NSF - funded program to provide 25 - 30 years of
sustained ocean measurements to study climate variability, ocean circulation and ecosystem dynamics, air - sea exchange, seafloor processes, and plate - scale geodynamics.
The temperatures used here are land and
ocean measurements analyzed by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, using NOAA temperature measuring stations across the world.
Making the world's public oceanographic data easily available and sortable is behind Marinexplore's platform, and the current iteration allows users to visualize and combine satellite data with in -
situ ocean measurements from 10 different ocean platforms.
We combine satellite data
with ocean measurements to depths of 1,800 m, and show that between January 2001 and December 2010, Earth has been steadily accumulating energy at a rate of 0.50 + / - 0.43 Wm - 2 (uncertainties at the 90 % confidence level).
Earth's global average surface temperature has risen as shown in this plot of combined land and
ocean measurements from 1850 to 2012, derived from three independent analyses of the available data sets.
How about
the ocean measurements then?
A recent study highlights results obtained from an aircraft ocean survey that targeted a large warm core eddy in the eastern Caribbean Sea, where upper
ocean measurements are crucial to understanding the complexities of heat and moisture transfer during the passage of tropical cyclones.
At the time, we (correctly) pointed out that this result was going to be hard to reconcile with continued increases in sea level rise (driven in large part by thermal expansion effects), and that there may still be issues with way that the new ARGO floats were being incorporated into
the ocean measurement network.
The ocean measurements quite clearly show that global warming continues at a rapid rate, equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second.
The ARGO network has remedied the inadequacy of
the ocean measurements to some extent, but they still only measure down to 2000 metres - whereas the the global oceans are over twice that depth on average.