Inadvertent Errors in a High-profile Ocean Warming Paper Found, Scientists Agree to Get Corrections

Scientists involved in a major study published in Nature, which showed that oceans are warming at a faster rate than was thought previously, now acknowledge some key errors in their study. They accept that the errors that they did in the study, made their conclusions more certain than they actually are.

Published on October 31 in Nature, the research said that the rate at which oceans are warming is much faster than it was estimated previously, and are taking up more energy than the projected data of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN organisation to assess climate change. A previous estimate of IPCC says that oceans are capturing eight zetajoule of energy per year, whereas the new study puts it around 13 zetrajoule [Climatewire, Nov 1]. A zetajoule of energy is 21 zeros followed by 1.

Two weeks after the study got published, the authors involved in it have submitted corrections to the publication. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the institute that several researchers of the study belong to, also published a corrected news release on its website which noted the problems in the scientists’ work.

Ralph Keeling, one of the main authors of the publication said in a statement in Realclimate —“I accept responsibility for what happened because it’s my role to make sure that those kinds of details got conveyed”. Defending the novelty of their methodology adopted in the study he said, “These problems do not invalidate the methodology or the new insights into ocean biogeochemistry on which it is based, but they do influence the mean rate of warming we infer, and more importantly, the uncertainties of that calculation.”

The first author of the paper, Laure Rasplandy commented to Science, “Obviously, this is difficult, but I am glad we are setting it right”. Rasplandy is an associate professor of geosciences at Princeton University, US.

In a statement issued to Washington Post, Nature said, “Issues relating to this paper have been brought to Nature’s attention and we are looking into them carefully. We take all concerns related to papers we have published very seriously and will issue an update once further information is available.”

The original study and the coming up of the controversy:

The study that sparked controversy shortly after its publication derived a new method to assess how much heat the oceans are absorbing. The authors measured volumes of oxygen and carbon dioxide that have escaped the oceans in the recent decades, and made their way to the atmosphere, as it becomes warmer. They found that the warming is higher than the estimates done previously. This, in turn, accelerates the rate of global warming itself.

The results from the study, according to the authors, suggest that there is less time than previously thought to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The study could gather considerable media attention

Controversy on the study erupted soon after “a major problem” in it was pointed out by a former professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Nicholas Lewis, in his elaborate post to the blog Judithcurry, said that the method adopted in the study largely underestimates the uncertainty. This means that the results projected in the study appears to be much definitive than they really are. This leaves the space of biases in their conclusions.

Keeling admits that there are problems in their study in the line pointed by Nicholas Lewis.