Ocean Climate matters

Why Europe is warming up faster than elsewhere?

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Activity at sea, whether by shipping, fishing or offshore drilling and windfarms is a big climate change issue. Not for climate research, ignoring this anthropogenic aspect completely. In the last few decades, Europe has warmed not only faster than the global average, but also faster than expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases, says B-W. Dong, (et al., March,2017), which is known for some time (van Oldenborgh et al, 2009) . But how is it possible? The beloved culprit GHG is equally distributed around the globe.
On the other hand the EEA [European Environment Agency] observed (Fig. 1): Over the past 25 years the rate of increase in sea surface temperature in all European seas has been about 10 times faster than the average rate of increase during the past century. In five European seas the warming occurs even more rapidly. In the North and Baltic Seas temperature rose five to six times faster than the global average over the past 25 years, and three times faster in the Black and Mediterranean Seas. ( see: EEA-update 2015). Those are facts that must not be ignored (see PDF from: Journal of Shipping and Ocean Engineering ; Volume 7, 2016 and Box below).

Many ten-thousand screw driven vessels navigate the sea around Europe daily. Many thousand installations at sea, down to 100 meters and more, alter the highly variable sea structure concerning temperature and salinity day and night, during summer and winter. But nowhere is this an issue. The B-W. Dong paper restricts the investigation on ‘rapid summer warms’, with the meager result that: “That is hardly more informative as van Oldenborgh concluded back in 2009: ‘climate predictions for western Europe probably underestimate the effects of anthropogenic climate change’. Many dozen papers have been published ever since on the summer warming (see B-W. Dong), improving little.

It seems high time that climatology is willing to adopt a more focused approach. On one hand summer is by far the most difficult time period due to the impact of the sun. Look instead to the winter season and for example to the norther part of Europe and it is possible to explain that “Northern European winters are getting warmer and warmer at a rate higher than global average”, due to activity by man at sea, explained in detail by A. Bernaerts: HERE & in BOX BELOW

B.-W. DONG, ET AL (MARCH 2017): UNDERSTANDING THE RAPID SUMMER WARMING AND CHANGES IN TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE THE MID-1990S OVER WESTERN EUROPE ___G. J. VAN OLDENBORGH ET AL (2009): WESTERN EUROPE IS WARMING MUCH FASTER THAN EXPECTED ___BERNAERTS, A. (2016): OFFSHORE WIND-PARKS AND NORTHERN EUROPE’S MILD WINTERS: CONTRIBUTION FROM SHIPS, FISHERY, ET  CETERA?  JOURNAL OF SHIPPING AND OCEAN ENGINEERING ; VOLUME 7, NUMBER 1, JAN.-FEB. 2017 (SERIAL NUMBER 24), VIA THE FOLLOWING LINKS:

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