Global Warming

The effects of global warming on nature via Shutterstock.

While rising temperatures throughout the world are still occurring, according to some experts, rapid warming has flat-lined, or “paused” since the late 1990s.  Even as gas emissions have significantly risen, heat has seemed to escape somewhere.  However, “Where to?” is the question that has many scientists confounded.  According to two experts, oceanographer Xianyao Chen, and atmospheric scientist Ka-Kit Tung, northern and southern parts of the Atlantic Ocean may hold some explanation.

Experts posit that global warming’s affects will likely recommence within the next decade.  Global warming is just on hold, however; until then, heat is finding a place where it can be stored away.  Chen and Tung explain that the temperatures recorded—well below 900 feet on the ocean floor—would cause intense heat waves on the Earth’s surface. It’s not that warming isn’t happening; it’s just that it’s not affecting Earth’s surface as much as it should be.

In the past, scientists have claimed that the global warming “pause” has something to do with the Pacific Ocean rather than the Atlantic, and many are convinced that it still does today.  However, Tung explained that the Pacific Ocean has not confirmed enormous rising heat temperatures as have areas of the Atlantic Ocean.  Data collected from both Chen and Tung have revealed heat energy has been stored at a higher intensity in the Atlantic Ocean than any of the world’s other oceans put together.

The Atlantic Ocean goes through a natural climate cycle, which has been speculated by many experts (including Chen and Tung) to confine Earth’s missing heat.  Depths in the ocean trap heat after cool and salty water, which travels north, has sunk.

Surface temperatures are still at an all-time high, though.  Yet for now, global warming as we know it has actually contained itself in large part.  Experts are convinced that in the near future global warming will resume, this time in a full-fledged attack.