A paper appearing in the June 3 issue of the journal Science by Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at Scripps, and colleagues reported that a strong warming signal has penetrated the world's oceans over the last 40 years that cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or by solar or volcanic forcings - but is consistent with human causes.

"The thing that is nice about our deal is that we found that most of the heat increase has gone into the oceans, and the oceans are the flywheel of the global climate system," Barnett told UPI's Climate. "We looked at where the biggest signal was. If your models are going to be any good, you'd like to get that one right - and they sure did."

Barnett's group found a close agreement between observed warming signals in the oceans and the predictions of two prominent climate models: one called the Parallel Climate Model used by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and one used by Britain's Hadley Centre in Exeter.

The results indicate the climate models can be trusted for any important predictions.

"Since the historical changes have been well simulated, future changes predicted by these global models are apt to be reasonably good, at least out to, say, 20 or 30 years into the future," the paper said, although Barnett told Climate that the models' accuracy farther out, to 2050, for example, is less reliable.

Nevertheless, he said, the results are strong enough to settle the argument about whether human activity is causing current warming.

"The amount of heat that has gone into the oceans is truly remarkable," Barnett told Climate. "When you look at the energy, if we could tap it -- we can't -- but if we could, it would supply the energy needs of the state of California, the seventh biggest economy in the world, for 215,000 years."

He said that when he worked the numbers, he said to himself, "'This is wrong.' (Then) I went to a colleague and told him what I was doing. He came back about 15 minutes later and said, 'Sorry I took so long, but I thought I was wrong, too. I got the same thing.'"

In terms of temperature, Barnett said, "It's not a big deal -- maybe half a degree."

In a paper presented in May at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union, however, S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, well-known skeptic of warming science and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, said: "The enhanced (anthropogenic) greenhouse effect from an increase in greenhouse gases makes only a minor contribution to sea-surface temperatures. Thus SST should not warm appreciably in response to the anthropogenic greenhouse effect."

Singer hypothesized that the SST records of the past 25 years represent an artifact of the measurement techniques. The measurements showing warming "consists principally of temperature data from engine-cooling water measured at ship inlets (typically around depths of 10 meters -- 32 feet -- and below the euphotic zone, where the sunlight penetrates sufficiently to support photosynthesis) and, since 1980, an increasing amount of data from drifter buoys in the (warmer) euphotic zone."

The paper by Barnett and colleagues comes on the heels of another paper in Science a few weeks ago that found Earth is absorbing considerably more energy from the sun than it is emitting back into space.

That paper, by James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and colleagues found Earth's heat balance has shifted substantially.

Based both on models and observations, they concluded the planet can expect global warming of an average of 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit), even if carbon-dioxide emissions into the atmosphere were curtailed immediately.

"This energy imbalance is the 'smoking gun' that we have been looking for," Hansen said in a news release. "It shows that our estimates of the human-made and natural climate forcing agents are about right, and they are driving the Earth toward a warmer climate."

The two papers are complementary. Together, they provide strong verification of at least the larger mid-time-scale predictions of the climate models.

"The statistical significance of these results is far too strong to be merely dismissed and should wipe out much of the uncertainty about the reality of global warming," Barnett said.

He added there is an immediate effect from these changes, particularly on the hydrologic cycle. Regional water supplies will be affected, he said, impacted by glacier melting in China and in the Andes and changes in the snow pack in the western United States.

Western U.S. states with adequate water-storage facilities to trap earlier-melting snows -- such as most along the Rockies -- may not have much trouble, but such reservoirs do not exist in California and the Pacific Northwest, and building them is likely to lead to long and acrimonious environmental struggles.

The ocean-warming research results are strong enough, Barnett thinks, along with the other recent research, to shift the debate away from whether human-induced climate change is occurring.

"We need to do something about it," he said. "We need leadership. There are a lot of things that can be done, and we're doing none of them, as a country. If they think they've got Social Security problems in 2041, wait until they see what this one looks like."

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