A Steady Increase in the Mean Global Ocean Warming

  In a blog two weeks ago I used a global ocean warming rate based on a least squares fit of the slope a line through the fixed starting point of the record. There is an advantage for using the fixed starting point since it allows the comparison of periods of different lengths. This allows us to avoid the comparison of apples and oranges. As the length of the period over which the rate is determined increases one might expect it to approach some fixed value if there was some long term average for the global warming rate and its fluctuations were bounded. This definition however shows a nearly steady rate of increase since about 1945.

The changes in CO₂ emissions do not seem to have significantly affected this change in the rate of global ocean warming.