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Page 1 of 2  Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent
home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the
oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That
could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean
scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling
them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the
Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record.
But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are
what really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80
percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean
waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has
been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the
Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean
temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has
recorded no warming of the global oceans.
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