Monday, June 24, 2013

Where does all that heat go?

Now that a quarter through this decade has passed, the Climate Comission has updated it's report The Critical Decade.

Here's a stat i found interesting. Even though we focus a lot on the Arctic melting, the increase in air temperature, and the Greenland ice sheet - that's only part a small part of the story. Almost 90% of the extra heat from global warming is stored in the ocean.


So while it's shocking that we've melted half the Arctic ice - there's also 90 times that amount of heat already stored up in the oceans. It's this extra heat that makes hurricanes, cyclones and flooding more intense.

The Climate Commission also reports that 80% of the worlds fossil fuels need to remain in the ground, if we are to avoid the global target of keeping warming under 2°C.

[More graphics from the report]

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