Discovery of ‘Missing Heat’ From Polar Regions and Africa Prompts New Global Warming Estimate

The rate of global warming at the Arctic is eight times more than other parts of the world, according to a latest research.

According to the new study, the Arctic is warming nearly eight times faster than the rest of the world. The rate of this global warming is evident from the latest discovery of 'missing heat' in the climate systems. This new finding questions the paradigm of reduced global warming in the past decade.

 The observational data on which the present climate records are based are known to cover just 84 percent of the globe. The  new finding states that these observational data didn't include the Polar Regions and many parts of Africa. This missing heat discovery calls for the climate scientists to provide a new estimate of global warming.

The missing global temperatures were reconstructed by Dr Kevin Cowtan, a computational scientist at the University of York, and Robert Way, a cryosphere specialist and PhD student at the University of Ottawa. By merging the satellite observations along with the surface data gathered from weather stations and ships in the unsampled regions, the researchers have reconstructed the missing link of the global temperatures.

The previous theories by the UK Met Office were based on the HadCRUT4 dataset that covers just five-sixth of the globe. HadCRUT is the dataset of monthly instrumental temperature records that was introduced in March 2012. This data indicated that the rate of global warming has gradually reduced since 1997. But this latest study knocks down this theory stating that the missing data clearly indicates that since 1997, the rate of warming is two and a half times more than what the Met Office produced.

"There's a perception that global warming has stopped but, in fact, our data suggests otherwise. But the reality is that 16 years is too short a period to draw a reliable conclusion. We find only weak evidence of any change in the rate of global warming," Dr. Cowtan said in a statement.

The researchers investigated the previous theory of reduced global warming by analyzing the changes right from 1997-2012. They noticed that HadCRUT4 estimates the surface warming at 0.046 degree Celsius per decade and NASA showed a 0.080 degree Celsius increase per decade. But the new estimations and hybrid data set reveal the trend during the same time at 0.11 and 0.12 per decade, according to The Guardian.  

Observations made from the high latitude weather stations, radio and satellite observations of temperatures in the lower atmosphere and repeated analysis of the historical data offer strong evidence of the high speed warming of the Arctic.

Robert Way explains, "Changes in Arctic sea ice and glaciers over the past decade clearly support the results of our study. By producing a truly global temperature record, we aim to better understand the drivers of recent climate change."

The findings were documented in the Quaterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.