researchers working on boat

Ocean temperatures increased as much in the last two decades as they had in more than a century before, according to a new study co-authored by SCRiM scientist, Chris Forest.

“Since the 1990s, the total amount of heat content change in the oceans is twice that of what we’d seen up until that point in the past 150 years,” said Chris Forest, a Penn State meteorology professor and associate in the university’s Earth and Environmental Systems Institute.

The findings, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, indicate not only that temperatures are rising at an increased rate, but that warming is reaching deeper waters.

“Over the past few decades the ocean has continued to warm substantially, and with time the warming signals are reaching deeper into the ocean,” said Peter Gleckler, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and lead author on the paper.

See the publication in Nature Climate Change and supporting images for the publication.

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Image: Alicia Navidad/CSIRO