A new NASA and university analysis of ocean data collected
more than 135 years ago by the crew of the HMS Challenger oceanographic
expedition provides further confirmation that human activities have warmed our
planet over the past century.
Researchers from the University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay,
Australia; and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., combined the
ship's measurements of ocean temperatures with modern observations from the
international Argo array of ocean profiling floats. They used both as inputs to
state-of-the-art climate models, to get a picture of how the world's oceans
have changed since the Challenger's voyage.