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"An Ocean in Crisis:" Unprecedented warming alarming scientists [1]

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Date: 2023-04-29  

Scientists are gobsmacked over the rapid temperature rise in the world’s oceans as temperatures rapidly accelerated to a degree higher than ever measured before. NOAA, through its Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) series, collected data from satellites and sea buoys revealing the higher temperatures lasting for a period of 42 days.

x Saturday Report 4/29/23 - This ocean warming study is so distressing, scientists don't want to talk about it https://t.co/zvTjija19T — Lorraine Miller (@lorrainemiller7) April 29, 2023

A strong El Niño weather season could further increase water temperatures in the next few months, resulting in even higher sea levels, increased extreme weather events, and the killing off of marine life. Additionally, warming waters are not able to absorb CO2, which would then increase temperatures in both the air and the oceans. (which previously consumed roughly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.)

“It’s surprising to me that we’re this far off the trajectory,” says Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit that gathers climate data. “Usually when you have a particular warming event, we’re beating the previous record by a little bit. Right now we’re sitting well above the past records for this time of year, for a considerable period of time.” Rhode points out that temperatures this week were just under two-tenths of a degree warmer than the previous record. “Two-tenths doesn’t sound like a lot—but in ocean terms two-tenths is actually a lot because it doesn’t warm as quickly as the land,” he says.

While the world’s oceans absorb up to 90 percent of the excess heat in the atmosphere, they also hand off that warmth back into the atmosphere, which then leads to higher temperatures on land. Experts suggest extreme warming in the world’s oceans is the new norm.

“Both the atmosphere and oceans are becoming warmer and warmer,” says Boyin Huang, a physical scientist and oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “If the atmosphere pushes the ocean, then the ocean will push back into the atmosphere.”

The BBC reports: Recent, rapid ocean warming ahead of El Niño alarms scientists

"It's not yet well established, why such a rapid change, and such a huge change is happening," said Karina Von Schuckmann, the lead author of the new study and an oceanographer at the research group Mercator Ocean International. "We have doubled the heat in the climate system the last 15 years, I don't want to say this is climate change, or natural variability or a mixture of both, we don't know yet. But we do see this change."

In a Guardian article Record ocean temperatures put Earth in ‘uncharted territory’, say scientists, experts suggest this unprecedented warming is a terrifying example of the climate crisis unfolding before our very eyes. There is also a fear that this is an example of climate change occurring much more rapidly than climate experts and modelers had predicted.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/29/2166596/--An-Ocean-in-Crisis-Unprecedented-warming-alarming-scientists

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