The vast Southern Ocean along with the southern Atlantic make up an unbroken ring of ocean that rings the global south. That is the enormous area of ocean that swallowed up Flight 370 without trace in its little traveled expanse. It is also probably swallowing up vast amount of heat according to a new study published in the journal Science. Amounts of heat potentially large enough to affect terrestrial surface temperatures masking the amount of heat the earth is trapping leading to claims of a "Hiatus" in Global Warming.
Global warming slowdown answer lies in depths of Atlantic, study finds
Excess heat being stored hundreds of metres down in Atlantic and Southern oceans – not Pacific as previously thought
By Adam Vaughan
The key to the slowdown in global warming in recent years could lie in the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans where excess heat is being stored – not the Pacific Ocean as has previously been suggested, according to new research.
But the finding suggests that a naturally occurring ocean cycle burying the heat will flip in around 15 years’ time, causing global temperature rises to accelerate again.
Several studies have focused on the Pacific as potentially playing a major role.
The new study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, concludes that the Pacific alone cannot explain the warming “hiatus” and that much of the heat being trapped by greenhouse gases at record levels in the atmosphere is being sunk hundreds of metres down in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.
Ka-Kit Tung, author of the paper and University of Washington professor, said: “The finding is a surprise, since the current theories had pointed to the Pacific Ocean as the culprit for hiding heat. But the data are quite convincing and they show otherwise.”
For now this phenomena seems to be buffering the warming of surface temperatures, but that's likely to rebound in the future accelerating the effects of Global Warming 15 years down the road.