Posted on 01/31/2025 7:05:48 AM PST by Red Badger
'There’s been an uptick in that imbalance and that has led to an uptick in the rate of ocean warming.' Credit: DepositPhotos
Earth’s oceans caught a fever in March 2023 that has yet to break. Since then, the bathwater-like conditions have killed corals in a record-breaking mass bleaching event, fueled hurricanes, and collapsed entire fisheries.
The two years of heat have created a scientific mystery, with 450 straight days of record high global sea surface temperatures from April 2023 to July 2024 — a streak that exceeded climate scientists’ predictions even when accounting for climate change and the natural climate pattern known as El Niño. A study published on Tuesday by researchers at the University of Reading helps solve the puzzle and points to one prominent culprit: the sun.
The study in Environmental Research Letters found that the rate of ocean warming has more than quadrupled over the past 40 years, driven by Earth’s growing energy imbalance — accounting for roughly 44 percent of the extra heat in recent El Niño years. Thanks to heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a decrease in reflectivity, the planet is absorbing more energy from the sun than is escaping back into space. Since 2010, according to the study, that disparity has doubled.
“There’s been an uptick in that imbalance and that has led to an uptick in the rate of ocean warming,” said Christopher Merchant, a professor of ocean and earth observation at the University of Reading in the U.K. and the study’s lead author.
By looking back through satellite observations since 1985 and developing a statistical model that isolated the trends in both ocean warming and Earth’s energy imbalance, the researchers found they were escalating in lockstep. According to Merchant, the study is possibly the first to connect the two phenomena over recent decades. “It’s a very tight correlation,” he said.
This relationship is bad news for the oceans, which have absorbed some 90 percent of the excess warming from human activity. Some of that heat will continue to seep down into the planet’s depths, while some will cycle back up toward the surface and escape into the atmosphere. According to the study, the next 20 years could warm up the oceans more than the last 40.
If you think of the oceans as a bath, Merchant says, it’s like the hot tap was only a trickle in the 1980s — but now, it’s been cranked up. “And what’s turning the tap more open, making the warming pick up speed, is an increase in greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide and methane — which are both still rising, largely from the fossil fuel industry,” he said.
There are other factors turning up the heat. The El Niño pattern that began in 2023 added around 0.1 or 0.2 degrees Celsius, before the inverse La Niña pattern took over in December 2024.
Another piece of the puzzle is the planet’s diminishing reflectivity, according to Brian McNoldy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. The ocean’s dark surface helps it absorb heat, whereas white clouds and aerosol particles in the atmosphere help bounce the sun’s radiation back into space. In 2020, the International Maritime Organization adopted a new rule to cut back on sulfur pollution from shipping fuel, but because the aerosol particles in emissions acted as a seed for clouds, the regulation had the unintended effect of dimming the marine layer of clouds that blanket the ocean.
“So you get rid of a lot of those, and now more of the sun’s energy can be absorbed in the ocean instead of reflecting off clouds,” McNoldy said. According to Merchant, efforts to curb air pollution from factories in countries like China also had the side effect of cutting back reflective aerosols.
The excess ocean warmth has had wide-ranging consequences. In April 2024, as the oceans started simmering, 77 percent of the world’s coral reefs became imperiled in the most extensive bleaching event on record, threatening the livelihoods of a billion people and a quarter of marine life. Changing ocean temperatures also shift weather patterns, potentially intensifying droughts, downpours, and storms alike.
“Hurricanes love warmer water. So all other things be equal, a warmer ocean can produce stronger hurricanes with maybe more frequent instances of rapid intensification,” McNoldy said. Last September, Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast after surging from a Category 1 to a Category 4 storm in a single day.
“The oceans really set the pace for global warming for the Earth as a whole,” Merchant said. The knock-on effects — like wildfires, drought, and floods — will continue to escalate, too. “That really needs to be understood, but it also needs to filter through to governments that changes might be coming down the line faster than they’re currently assuming.”
This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/oceans/why-earth-oceans-record-hot-streak/.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
The next ICE AGE successfully delayed, fire up the SUV’s, lets add some more years before the next one...
I just read an article yesterday claiming that the oceans are starting to cool again. The problem with America is that we have way too many “experts”.
Caused by too much Freedom.
The only solution is more Socialism.
/s
In 2020, the International Maritime Organization adopted a new rule to cut back on sulfur pollution from shipping fuel, but because the aerosol particles in emissions acted as a seed for clouds, the regulation had the unintended effect of dimming the marine layer of clouds that blanket the ocean.
“So you get rid of a lot of those, and now more of the sun’s energy can be absorbed in the ocean instead of reflecting off clouds,” McNoldy said. According to Merchant, efforts to curb air pollution from factories in countries like China also had the side effect of cutting back reflective aerosols.
when I took agronomy the sulfur from manufacturing in the east was very important for soil ph and fertilizer.
Gee Moe guess all the under water volcanos have nothing to do with huh.
And the one in Hawaii that’s been cranking out lave into the ocean for the last 25 years in nothing also huh.
2020 had most hurricanes. We are truth we have been seeing a decrease in the number of, and severity of storms
The recent hurricanes do not even make the top 10 of the most destructive
Second sentence in, "bathwater-like"?
I stopped reading there....
Great. I hope they keep warming. That darn Pacific is still too cold for swimming...lol.
“It’s a very tight correlation,” he said.
Ought to be a number between zero and one. Where does 'tight' land??
Leftist hot air has overwhelmed the oceans.
Lol.
It’s the hight of arrogance to think we can measure minute temperature changes in something so vast as the Earth’s oceans.
But maybe it’s not arrogance at all. Way more likely it’s scientific dishonesty: First decide on a conclusion, then force the data to fit that conclusion.
Experts gotta eat, too.
Volcanoes and the sun?
Is it possible that there are also active magma chambers under the underwater volcanoes, too? Could magma close to the bottom of the sea be contributing to ocean warming?
-PJ
I’d rather it be warmer during this record duration inter-glacial than back in the 2.5 million year ice age the Earth has been in. The cold kills way more than the heat does.
Global warming peaked about 8,000 or so years ago and it has been cooling off ever since then. During that time CO2 has gone up.
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