Earth’s largest ecosystem is getting cooked. Every day for the last 13 months, average temps over most of the sea’s surface have been the highest for that date in recorded history.
That’s according to data gleaned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Last year, scientists described the early stages of this as the first time Earth’s oceans became “hot-tub” hot.
“And we’re currently outpacing last year,” notes Robert West. He’s a meteorologist in Miami, Fla. He works for NOAA. And it’s not over, West adds. “We’re continuing to set records, even now.”
An El Niño has helped heat the seas. This climate event periodically develops when warmth spreads across surface waters in the tropical Pacific. El Niños emerge every few years. The latest started in late spring of 2023.
But natural climate cycles can’t explain all the warming. Heat is being stored within the sea’s top 2 kilometers (1.3 miles). This stored heat has been growing for decades, notes Hosmay Lopez. He’s a NOAA oceanographer who works in Miami. And, he adds, the rate of warming in that upper ocean has been speeding up.
Why? Since 1971, the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat that greenhouse gases have trapped in Earth’s atmosphere. We’re talking about more than 380 zettajoules of heat. That’s a lot. It’s about 1.5 million times as much energy as was released two years ago during the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption. It’s also some 25 billion times as much energy as was released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
Sending all that heat into the ocean has lots of impacts. Here are a few.
A hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season?
Hurricanes feed on water vapor and heat coming off the ocean. Right now, the Atlantic is very hot. So expect a very active hurricane season.
On April 4, researchers at Colorado State University in Fort Collins…
Read the full article here