"There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the
dominant cause of observed warming," said Hansen, director of NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University's Earth
Institute.

"This energy imbalance is the `smoking gun' that we have been looking
for."

Fourteen other specialists from NASA, Columbia and the Department of
Energy co-authored the study.



From The Associated Press, 4/28/05:

Experts: New Data Show Global Warming

By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent

NEW YORK --

Climate scientists armed with new data from deep in the ocean and far
into space have found that Earth is absorbing much more heat than it
is giving off, a conclusion they say validates projections of global
warming.

Lead scientist James Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist, described
the findings on the planet's out-of-balance energy exchange as a
"smoking gun" that should dispel doubts about forecasts of climate
change.

A European climate expert called it a valuable contribution to climate
research.

Hansen's team, reporting Thursday in the journal Science, said they
also determined that global temperatures will rise 1 degree Fahrenheit
this century even if greenhouse gases are capped tomorrow.

If carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions instead continue
to grow, as expected, things could spin "out of our control,"
especially as ocean levels rise from melting Greenland and Antarctic
ice sheets, the researchers said.

International experts predict a 10-degree leap in Fahrenheit readings
in such a worst-case scenario.

The NASA-led researchers were able to measure Earth's energy imbalance
because of more precise ocean readings collected by 1,800
technology-packed floats deployed in seas worldwide beginning in 2000,
in an international monitoring effort called Argo.

The robots regularly dive as much as a mile undersea to take
temperature and other readings.

Their measurements are supplemented by better satellite gauging of
ocean levels, which rise both from meltwater and as the sea warms and
expands.

With this data, the scientists calculated the oceans' heat content and
the global energy imbalance.

They found that for every square meter of surface area, the planet is
absorbing almost one watt more of the sun's energy than it is
radiating back to space as heat -- a historically large imbalance.

Such absorbed energy will steadily warm the atmosphere.

The 0.85-watt figure corresponds well with the energy imbalance
predicted by the researchers' supercomputer simulations of climate
change, the report said.

Those computer models factor in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
including carbon dioxide, methane and other gases -- produced by
everything from automobiles to pig farms.

Those gases keep heat from escaping into space.

Significantly, greenhouse emissions have increased at a rate
consistent with the detected energy imbalance, the researchers said.

"There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the
dominant cause of observed warming," said Hansen, director of NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University's Earth
Institute.

"This energy imbalance is the `smoking gun' that we have been looking
for."

Fourteen other specialists from NASA, Columbia and the Department of
Energy co-authored the study.

Scientists have found other possible "smoking guns" on global warming
in recent years, but Klaus Hasselmann, a leading German climatologist,
praised the Hansen report for its innovative work on energy imbalance.

"This is valuable additional supporting evidence" of manmade climate
change, he told The Associated Press.

In February, scientists at San Diego's Scripps Institution of
Oceanography said their research -- not yet published -- also showed a
close correlation between climate models and the observed temperatures
of oceans, further defusing skeptics' past criticism of uncertainties
in modeling.

____________________________________________________

Harry