Study shows oceans warm more quickly than suspected

The world's oceans have warmed 50 percent faster over the last 40 years than previously thought due to climate change.

Higher ocean temperatures expand the volume of water, contributing to a rise in sea levels that is submerging small island nations and threatening to wreak havoc in low-lying, densely-populated delta regions around the globe.

The study, published in the British journal Nature, adds to a growing scientific chorus of warnings about the pace and consequences rising oceans. Rising sea levels are driven by two things: the thermal expansion of sea water, and additional water from melting sources of ice. Both processes are caused by global warming.

The ice sheet that sits atop Greenland, for example, contains enough water to raise world ocean levels by seven metres (23 feet), which would bury sea-level cities from Dhaka to Shanghai.

The planet's oceans store more than 90 percent of the heat in the Earth's climate system and act as a temporary buffer against the effects of climate change. When previous investigators tried to add up all the estimated contributions to sea level rise, thermal expansion, melting glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, along with changes in terrestrial storage, they did not match with the independently estimated total sea level rise.

When all the figures don't add up, its time we should think of Space or at lease learn how to swim or sailing.