For more than a century, scientists have taken temperature readings around the world from land-based labs, ships, and satellites. These historical temperature records show that the Earth is warming, and that temperatures are rising the most in large land masses and areas near the earth's poles.
"Our observations tell us this, but it also fits right in with the laws of physics and our expectations for what would happen," says Adam Schlosser, the deputy director at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
One thing physics tells us is that water reflects much of the sun’s energy back into the atmosphere, while a land mass absorbs much more of that energy. That means it takes more added heat to raise ocean temperatures than land temperatures. This is why most of the warming we see today is happening on continents rather than over the ocean.
