Many are sure, however, that global greenhouse warming, if and when it happens, will alter atmospheric circulation by creating heat imbalances on the planet's surface: the ocean warms more slowly than the land.

Have the oceans been warming recently - you know, inline with the significant increase of human-emitted CO2 that's causing all the fuss?

"We want to see if oceans are warming in response to the greenhouse effect," Dr. Munk said, explaining that in water, sound moves faster as the temperature rises.

Today, the ocean is warming, ice is melting and water vapor is rising.

Even as we speak, the inhabitants of the island of Carteret in the South Pacific are being evacuated because the oceans are warming and expanding and rising.

Ice melted, oceans warmed, and rocks at last were no longer frozen to the touch but gently warm.

The clathrates were buried beneath mud that was disturbed as the oceans warmed.

Gore said there was now evidence that the globe's hydrological cycles were changing: as the atmosphere and oceans warmed, more water was evaporating and getting stored in the atmosphere.

New studies have found that all Northern Hemisphere sea ice is melting at a rate of about 15 percent per decade and that the oceans as a whole are warming.

Until the oceans warm up and lenghthening daily sunlight begins to dissipate the Arctic cold, average temperatures in North America continue to drop.