As global temperatures rise, the oceans continue to absorb much of the excess heat, acting as a sort of 'shock-absorber' in modifying the impact of sharp changes in the atmospheric content of both CO2 and the even-more-dangerous methane.
In case you missed the July issuance of the State of the Climate in 2009, a product of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center...
The oceans are still heating up, and continuing to lose their populations of phytoplankton. Those phytoplankton, of course, are responsible for consuming the CO2 that we are dumping into the atmosphere, and converting it to good ol' oxygen, which, if you haven't noticed, really comes in handy for us air breathers. It seems that we are taking our own long, strange trip through the looking glass. A couple of excerpts to ponder...
During the latest El Niño a considerable build up of heat was observed in the upper equatorial Pacific Ocean. Global integrals of upper-ocean heat content for the last several years have reached values consistently higher than for all prior times in the record, demonstrating
the dominant role of the oceans in the Earth’s energy budget.
...and this memorable note...
• The global ocean CO2 uptake flux for 2008, the most recent year for which analyzed data are available, is estimated to have been 1.23 Pg C yr-1, which is 0.25 Pg C yr-1 smaller than the longterm average. This lower uptake is significant when compared to the 1σ interannual ariability
estimate of ±0.14 Pg C yr-1 for the whole 27-year record. The total global ocean inventory of anthropogenic carbon stored in the ocean interior as of 2008 is 151 Pg C. This estimate suggests a 33 Pg C increase in inventory since 1994, reflecting uptake and storage of anthropogenic CO2 at rates
of 2.0 and 2.3 ±0.6 Pg C yr-1 for the decades of the 1990s and 2000s, respectively.
• The downward trend in global chlorophyll observed since 1999 has continued through 2009, with current chlorophyll stocks in the central
stratified oceans now approaching record lows since 1997.
So, despite the hired-gun denialist propaganda of the coal and oil industries and their allies in government, the problem continues to grow beyond the corrective reach of the human race.
Oh, and we can stop wondering where the incredible amount of water required to flood Pakistan came from. Consider this additional nugget:
The tropical Indian Ocean SSTA increased substantially from 2008 to 2009. Figure 3.1a shows that the yearly mean SSTA in 2009 was about +0.3°C (+0.6 °C) in the central-eastern (western and southwestern) tropical Indian Ocean. The 2009 minus 2008 SSTA differences indicate
that SSTA increased by more than 0.6°C in the western and southeastern
tropical Indian Ocean (Fig. 3.1b). As a result, 2009 became the second warmest year in the tropical Indian Ocean behind 1998 when the record warming occurred...
Additionally, there is growing evidence that the jet stream, an always somewhat unpredictable belt of high-speed winds circling the globe in the mid latitudes of both hemispheres, is behaving even more erratically than normal. The unusually cold winter in the eastern US six months ago was due to a lingering trough in the stream. The same thing has happened this summer over Europe and Asia, and is the cause of both the long heat-wave that destroyed much Russian agriculture, and the persistent low that sucked up all that Indian Ocean moisture and dropped in onto India, Pakistan, and western China.
Be prepared for ever-wilder weather events, because from here on out, as Alice reminded us, it just gets curiouser and curiouser!