Earth's Ocean Abyss is Not Heating Up with Global Warming

While other parts of the world's oceans have warmed, it turns out that the cold abyss may have escaped that particular fate. Scientists have found that the Earth's deep ocean has not warmed measurably since 2005.

In order to measure the deep ocean, NASA scientists turned to satellite and direct ocean temperature data from 2005 to 2013. They found that the ocean abyss below 1.24 miles has not warmed measurably, which may help explain the recent global warming "pause."

Many processes on land and sea have influenced what is happening to the "missing" heat associated with global warming. One of the most popular ideas is that the bottom half of the ocean is taking up the slack. Yet this latest study throws a wrench into that particular theory.

"The deep parts of the ocean are harder to measure," said William Llovel, lead author of the new study, in a news release. "The combination of satellite and direct temperature data gives us a glimpse of how much sea level rise is due to deep warming. The answer is-not much."

In fact, deep ocean warming contributed virtually nothing to sea level rise from the period of 2005 to 2013. Yet during the same period, the top half of the ocean continued to warm, unabated. This shows that our planet is still heating up.

"The sea level is still rising," said Josh Willis, co-author of the new study. "We're just trying to understand the nitty-gritty details."

The findings reveal that while our oceans are warming, this warming isn't occurring in the abyss. Instead, it's occurring on surface water. This particular finding could cause oceanic and climate models to change in order to better predict what will happen in the future as temperatures continue to warm and as greenhouse gases continue to enter the atmosphere.

The findings are published in two papers in Nature Climate Change here and here.