The sun has been in a historically significant quite period over the last decade and a bit, yet most of the worlds hottest ever years have occurred in the last decade.
C02 levels highest in 5 million years
Global temperature increase from 1901-2010: 0.8 degrees Global temperature increase from 1979-2010: 0.5 degrees
Sea 'surface' temperature 0.4 degrees warmer than in 1971, rising 0.1 degree per decade, 0.015 per decade at 700m depth.
Sea level rise of 1.4-2mm/year from 1901-1993, 2.7-3.3mm/year from 1993-2010.
Estimated that the ocean has absorbed 32-48 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in the last 16 years, making them more acidic.
**FUN FACT: recent research suggests that as the ocean acidifies, organisms living in the oceans will release less of a chemical which enters the atmosphere and protects us all from deadly solar radiation.
Global glassier mass has declined by 200-371 billion tonnes since 2003.
The average annual ice loss from Greenland was between 101bn tonnes and 145bn tonnes between 1993 and 2010, rising to 174bn to 282bn tonnes a year in the period 2005-2010.
Loss of arctic sea ice was approximately 3.9%/decade from 1979-2010.
**Bonus - As sea ice melts, the water it turns into absorbs more heat and reflects less back into space, accelerating warming. Same goes for land bound ice, except this time the land is doing the absorbing and not the reflecting...
While the rate of increase has slowed over the last 15 years, down from 0.12 degrees/decade to +0.05 degrees/decade for the 15 years prior to 2012, the decade to 2012 was the warmest on record, confirming the upwards trend in average temperatures. The reasons for the slowing are not entirely understood, but contributing factors potentially include increased volcanic activity pumping a layer of sulfides into the upper atmosphere which we know helps cool it, a decrease in solar activity, a decrease in emissions caused by the GFC and a whole bunch of other things.
And finally some general observations from me...
Why is it that those deniers always use the fact recent winters in the northern hemisphere have been particularly cold as evidence against climate change? You are mistaking a local climate for the global climate...
One of the potential effects of warmer temperatures is that the Greenland ice sheet could completely fall apart. It is speculated by many scientists that this injection of fresh water into surrounding seas could cause the collapse of the mid-Atlantic current which basically acts as a heat distributor for the oceans in the norther hemisphere. This theory is backed up by early modelling, and the implications are that it could plunge the northern hemisphere into a temporary ice age.
I'm sure if signs of this occurring showed up you would argue that this disproves global warming because somewhere would be getting cooler.
Oh and BTW, hottest September day on record across may towns in QLD today. It also looks as if it will be QLD's hottest September on record, and if current projections are right this could be the hottest year on record across Australia. Nothing to worry about though, it's just those pesky lefties fear-mongering again.
