A study in the journal Science offers an explanation to where Earth's missing heat has gone.

At the dawn of the millennium, the temperature on the Earth's surface suddenly slowed, while greenhouse gas emissions were accumulating in the atmosphere.

This lead scientists to wonder where all the heat was going and why the Earth's temperature wasn't getting much hotter.

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For years, scientists thought that the answer could be found in the Pacific Ocean that sent cool waters to the surface to help cool the planet.

However, a recent study turned the solution on its head, pointing instead to the North and South Atlantic Ocean.

Instead of the oceans producing cool temperatures, the study found that the waters of the Atlantic were taking in heat, bringing it and storing it in deep parts.

Waters would initially flow north from the North Atlantic, eventually cooling and sinking. When the water sinks, it brings with it heat from the Earth, trapping and leaving it in the depths.

Afterwards, that same water heads south towards the equator and eventually rises again in the South Atlantic.

Similar scientific models were prepared before, but for the Pacific Ocean. Upon testing, the researchers were not able to find any large amounts of heat under the Pacific Ocean.

Thus, Ka-Kit Tung and Xianyao Chen - the authors of the study - studied the various oceans until they got to the Atlantic.

Tung and Chen noticed that the Atlantic was absorbing massive amounts of heat around 1999 at depths of 984 feet. This was just around the time when the Earth's heat went missing.

They stated that these regions were storing as much heat as all the oceans combined had.

While the debate for the Earth's missing heat will likely continue, this theory does support the notion that the planet's temperature is not increasing, yet greenhouse gases are.

TagsAtlantic Ocean, Earth, Science