{"id":23209,"date":"2024-04-10T16:03:34","date_gmt":"2024-04-10T16:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/10\/ocean-heat-has-shattered-records-for-more-than-a-year-whats-happening\/"},"modified":"2024-04-10T16:03:34","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T16:03:34","slug":"ocean-heat-has-shattered-records-for-more-than-a-year-whats-happening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/10\/ocean-heat-has-shattered-records-for-more-than-a-year-whats-happening\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocean Heat Has Shattered Records for More Than a Year. What\u2019s Happening?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"549\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/10\/multimedia\/2024-04-10-sst-promo-index\/2024-04-10-sst-promo-index-facebookJumbo-v3.png?resize=1050,549&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Ocean Heat Has Shattered Records for More Than a Year. What\u2019s Happening?\" title=\"Ocean Heat Has Shattered Records for More Than a Year. What\u2019s Happening?\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The ocean has now broken temperature records every day for more than a year. And so far, 2024 has continued 2023\u2019s trend of beating previous records by wide margins. In fact, the whole planet has been hot for months, according to many different data sets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere\u2019s no ambiguity about the data,\u201d said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. \u201cSo really, it\u2019s a question of attribution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Understanding what specific physical processes are behind these temperature records will help scientists improve their climate models and better predict temperatures in the future.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Last month, the average global sea surface temperature reached a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/climate.copernicus.eu\/march-2024-10th-consecutive-record-warm-month-globally\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">new monthly high of 21.07 degrees Celsius<\/a>, or 69.93 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a research institution funded by the European Union.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cMarch 2024 continues the sequence of climate records toppling for both air temperature and ocean surface temperatures,\u201d Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said in a statement this week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The tropical Atlantic is abnormally warm, helping set the stage for a busy hurricane season, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/04\/climate\/ocean-temperature-hurricane-forecast.html\" title=\"\">according to an early forecast by scientists<\/a> at Colorado State University. Higher ocean temperatures provide more energy to fuel stronger storms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Global temperatures are rising long-term because the burning of fossil fuels adds greenhouse gases, which warm the planet, to the atmosphere. So far, climate change has raised the global average temperature by about 1.2 degrees Celsius, or 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, above the preindustrial average temperature. And because it takes more energy to heat up water than air, the oceans have absorbed <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2023\/08\/03\/climate\/ocean-temperatures-heat-earth.html\" title=\"\">the vast majority of the planet\u2019s warming<\/a> from greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the \u201cmassive, massive records\u201d set over the past year are beyond what scientists would expect to see even considering climate change, Dr. Schmidt said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">What\u2019s different now, compared with this time last year, is that the planet is dealing with the effects of an El Ni\u00f1o event that began in July. El Ni\u00f1o events are natural climate patterns associated with elevated temperatures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe temperatures that we\u2019re seeing now, the records being broken in February and March, are actually much more in line with what we would expect,\u201d compared with those of last year, Dr. Schmidt said. \u201cLet\u2019s see what happens by the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">El Ni\u00f1o is weakening and expected to dissipate soon. What happens to global average temperatures then would help shed light on the temperatures of 2023, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In addition to climate change and El Ni\u00f1o, there are a couple of other factors that might be contributing to these dizzying records.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">One is a recent reduction in aerosol pollution from container ships traversing the ocean, following new international fuel standards that took effect in 2020. Ironically, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/11\/03\/climate\/less-pollution-more-global-warming.html\" title=\"\">aerosols have a cooling effect<\/a> in the atmosphere, and had been helping to mask the true extent of climate change until now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">There was also the huge eruption of the underwater <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/09\/22\/climate\/tonga-volcano-climate.html\" title=\"\">Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha\u02bbapai volcano<\/a> in 2022. Volcanic eruptions that happen on land send up plumes of soot and aerosols, which block sunlight and temporarily cool the atmosphere. But because this volcano was submerged under the Pacific Ocean, its eruption also sprayed millions of tons of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt was the most explosive eruption since Krakatau, and usually the year after is when you see the impacts,\u201d said Sean Birkel, an assistant professor at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute, who created a climate data visualization tool called Climate Reanalyzer. He suspects the warming effect of the volcanic eruption has been larger than early estimates suggested, noting that the eruption may have affected atmospheric circulation and helped amplify the El Ni\u00f1o that developed in 2023. But, he added, more research is needed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Schmidt pointed out that when scientists put together their estimates so far of how much the volcanic eruption, the reduced shipping pollution, El Ni\u00f1o and climate change should warm the planet, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-024-00816-z\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the numbers don\u2019t add up<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere could be still something missing,\u201d he said, like other sources of aerosol pollution having improved more than researchers know, or Earth\u2019s climate having more internal variability than expected, or global warming amplifying the effects of El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Several groups of scientists are working to get a clearer picture, Dr. Schmidt said, and he expects results to start being published in the next few months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Nadja Popovich<!-- --> contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/10\/climate\/ocean-heat-records.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ocean has now broken temperature records every day for more than a year. And so far, 2024 has continued 2023\u2019s trend of beating previous records by wide margins. In fact, the whole planet has been hot for months, according to many different data sets. \u201cThere\u2019s no ambiguity about the data,\u201d said Gavin Schmidt, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/10\/multimedia\/2024-04-10-sst-promo-index\/2024-04-10-sst-promo-index-facebookJumbo-v3.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11505,1029,4522,5749,28531,300,568],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23211,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23209\/revisions\/23211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}