Source: USA Today
October 12, 2010

Coral records show that the oceans are heating exactly as predicted by climate scientists.

In a forthcoming study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers report Pacific island soft corals reveal the "thermocline", the point where cold, deep water meets warm surface water has gotten shallower, an indication of decreased ocean circulation predicted by global warming models.

"Climate modelers looking at how the Pacific might respond to global warming have predicted that the atmospheric patterns in the tropical Pacific would weaken, and if that happened, you would expect the thermocline to get shallower in the western tropical Pacific," says study co-author Branwen Williams of the University of Toronto, in a statement. "Our data are some of the first proxy data to support what the modelers have been predicting."

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