Open AccessAnother thermostat
Author(s) -
Carlowicz Michael
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/97eo00061
Subject(s) - climatology , global warming , environmental science , pacific ocean , ocean current , meteorology , observatory , thermostat , climate change , oceanography , geology , geography , engineering , physics , astrophysics , mechanical engineering
While Earth's surface temperatures have risen by 0.3°C to 0.6°C in this century, the eastern equatorial Pacific—a key component of the global climate system—seems to have cooled. According to a team of scientists from the Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory and NASA's Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes, this contradiction and the temperature gradients it leads to may help explain why global temperatures have risen by only half as much as computer models have suggested that they should. According to Mark Cane, of Lamont‐Doherty, and colleagues, a natural air‐ocean circulation system in the tropical Pacific may be partially offsetting the effect of rising air temperatures, a possibility that has not been properly accounted for in computer models of climate. In a phenomenon related to El Niño, the Pacific Ocean may in fact be slowing, or at least regulating, the process of global warming by redistributing heat to regions where it dissipates more easily.