Did you know that oceans play a crucial role in the climate system?
On February 8, we had the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Roland Pail from the Technical University of Munich to our meeting of the Rotaract Club of Munich. Roland Pail is a professor at the chair of astronomical and physical geodesy and gave us a presentation on the role of the oceans in the climate system. He explained how state-of-the-art gravity missions can measure ocean circulation, sea level rise, and the melting of ice masses with millimeter precision.
“The oceans are a huge storehouse of heat and carbon dioxide. However, energy is also redistributed from the equatorial regions toward the poles via ocean currents. Climate change is reflected in changing current patterns of these ocean currents, but also in the variation of sea level. Today, we measure a sea level rise of about 3.5 mm per year as a global average. About two-thirds of this results from inputs from melting ice masses, and about one-third is caused by thermal expansion due to increased ocean temperatures.
With high-precision geodesy techniques, we are now able not only to measure global ocean current patterns and sea level change with high accuracy but from a combination of techniques, we can also quantify the individual contributions and thus track down the causes. And to actually find out how high the water level is, we also have to take into account how the solid Earth reacts to all the changes on its surface.”
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