Ocean Warming

CBS, June 17, 1997

On Tuesday, June 17, 1997 CBS news reported that Pacific Ocean water temperatures are at their highest recorded levels ever. They were not specific about which regions of the Pacific, though the graphic showed the area off of San Diego. They predicted unusual weather patterns this winter, which they attributed to El Nino.

Press Release No 36-98
European Space Agency Satellites Provide New Insight into Rising Sea Levels

Antarctica is not shrinking, the European Space Agency ESA reveals today. This result of the ERS (European Remote Sensing) satellites is reported 16 October 1998 by an international team of scientists in the leading American magazine, Science. But the same investigation provides evidence that one part of West Antarctica may be rapidly losing its ice to the ocean. The team of British, Dutch and American scientists, led by Professor Duncan Wingham at University College London, based their findings on ERS data collected over five years. The data reveal that most of the ice stored in Antarctica is very stable. The icy continent now looks an unlikely source of rising global sea level this century, making thermal expansion of the ocean due to global warming, and the shrinking of mountain glaciers, more likely causes.

Prof. Wingham's team used ERS's radar altimeter instruments to determine if the thickness of the Antarctic Ice Sheet changed over the five-year period from 1992 to 1996. Transmitting over 4,000,000 radar pulses to the surface of the ice, and measuring the time taken for the echoes to return to the satellite, the average change of the height of 63 of the Ice Sheet was measured with an accuracy of 0.5 cm per year. The ice sheet has changed on average by less than 1 cm per year. Using previous measurements of changes in snowfall over the ice sheet, the team concluded that the interior of the Antarctic Ice Sheet had contributed only 1.7 cm to sea level rise this century. Sea level has risen 18 cm over the past 100 years.