Oceans slowed down global warming

Washington: In the recent years, extra heat from greenhouse gases has been trapped in the subsurface waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans accounting for the slowdown in the global surface temperature increase observed during the past decade, shows a study.

The climate researchers from University of California, Los Angeles and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory found the movement of warm water has affected surface temperatures. "The western Pacific got so warm that some of the warm water is leaking into the Indian Ocean through the Indonesian archipelago," said lead author Veronica Nieves and a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Researchers analysed direct ocean temperature measurements, including observations from a global network of about 3,500 ocean temperature probes known as the Argo array. These measurements show temperatures below the surface have been increasing. The movement of the warm Pacific water westward pulled heat away from the surface waters of the central and eastern Pacific, which resulted in unusually cool surface temperatures during the last decade.