NOAA, Lawrence Livermore Scientists Say Ocean Warming More Rapidly

BERKELEY (CBS SF) -- Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Berkeley's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have found that ocean waters have been warming more rapidly over the past two decades than any previous decades on record.

The heat is also penetrating deeper into the ocean, according to the findings of the study, published Monday in the Nature Climate Change scientific journal.

Peter Gleckler, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the lead author of the paper, said that "In recent decades the ocean has continued to warm substantially, and with time the warming signal is reaching deeper into the ocean."

The warming of the ocean, as well as the atmosphere, the paper states, is a result of continuing greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists compared ocean heat measurements collected during an oceanographic expedition aboard the H.M.S. Challenger from 1872 to 1876, with ocean temperature data collected since then, including recent data collected using a global array of robotic profiling floats, called Argo, that sends the data to scientists using satellites.

This data, scientists say, also helps to project how quickly sea levels may rise.