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Ocean Climate Changes
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Häder, Donat-P. Gao, Kunshan |
| Copyright Year | 2018 |
| Description | Book Name: Aquatic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate |
| Abstract | The weather on Earth is nowhere constant. For example, on January 13, 1987, it was –22.2°C in Munich, Southern Germany, and on the same day in 2015 it was + 14.8°C (Deutscher Wetterdienst). In summer it could be sizzling hot with a harvest-threatening drought or it could be very wet with inundations. Snow on the Mediterranean Cote Azure is a rare event, but can happen occasionally as well as tornadoes over central Europe. These exceptional occurrences are characteristic for the day-to-day weather and are no indication for a climate change. In contrast, the average temperature over the Earth integrated over a whole year is a better measure for knowing the climate trend. Even these mean temperatures show a wide range of fluctuations, but when recorded over an extended period of time, such as several decades or even longer, long-term trends can be detected (Fig. 3.1). The strongest increase of about 0.9°C has taken place since 1960 and 16 of the hottest years have been recorded since 2000 (Ripple et al. 2017). The year 2016 was the warmest year since the beginning of precise measurements in 1880 and it was 1.1°C higher than before the industrial revolution and probably the warmest year since the end of the last interglacial period about 115,000 years ago (Dahl-Jensen et al. 2013). The air temperature increases more over land than over the oceans (Morice et al. 2012), though the oceans have absorbed over 90% of the Earth’s heat increase (Reid 2016). Between 1970 and 2014 the temperature of the land mass increased by 0.26 K while over the sea it increased by 0.12 K per decade (Met Office). This process is much faster than any other warming during the last 66 million years. If the predictions become true that the global mean temperature will increase by 4–5°C, within the next 100 years this rise will be about 100 times faster than that since the last 10,000 years. Most of the continental mass is located in the Northern Hemisphere and for this reason the temperatures rose stronger than in the Southern 33Hemisphere during the last 100 years. The night and winter temperatures increased stronger than the day and summer temperatures (Vose et al. 2005, Alexander et al. 2006), resulting in the strongest warming during the winter especially over the western part of North America, Scandinavia and Siberia (Hansen et al. 2005). The most dramatic warming occurred over the Arctic where the increase of the mean temperatures was about double that of the global average (IPCC—World Meteorological Organiszation 2007, Milner 2007). In fact the temperature increase and the consequent ice loss has broken one record after the other: in 2017 the winter ice extent was 14.8%, the sea ice loss was 42.5%, and in 2016 the winter air temperature was 8.7°C and the winter water vapour was 41% higher as compared to 1979 (Francis 2018). |
| Related Links | https://content.taylorfrancis.com/books/download?dac=C2018-0-87261-3&isbn=9780429436130&doi=10.1201/9780429436130-3&format=pdf |
| Ending Page | 44 |
| Page Count | 13 |
| Starting Page | 32 |
| DOI | 10.1201/9780429436130-3 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2018-11-16 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: Aquatic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate Atmospheric Sciences Europe Drought Summer Oceans Air Temperature Ice Day Strongest Southern Recorded |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
