The US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has published its latest assessment of the state of the earth's climate. It concludes: "A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record" (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/ )
From a New Zealand perspective, one of the most important points for us to note is that "90% of the warming that's happened on earth during the past 50 years has gone into the oceans. warming has been observed as far as 6,000 feet below the surface, but most of the heat is accumulating in the oceans' near-surface layers."
New Zealand is surrounded by ocean. We are 2,000kms from a major land mass. Our climate and day-to-day weather is intimately linked to the interactions between atmosphere and ocean. A warmer ocean means more rain, wind and storms. Slowly, it will also mean that sea levels continue to rise for the next many thousands of years.
Leave a comment