Reichert, Bernhard K.; Schnur, Reiner; Bengtsson, Lennart

Geophysical Research Letters

Published date June 1, 2002

Global ocean warming tied to anthropogenic forcing

  • Completes an optimal detection and attribution analysis, which confirms that the simulated climate change signal in observed global ocean heat content anomalies over the past five decades can be detected in the observations in both the upper 300 m and 3000 m of the water column
  • States that the observed changes in ocean heat content are consistent with those expected from the anthropogenically forced GCM integration
  • Concludes that anthropogenic forcing is a likely explanation for the observed global ocean warming over the past five decades