Home » Posts tagged 'ocean temperatures'

Tag Archives: ocean temperatures

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

The past’s extreme ocean heat waves are now the new normal

February 7, 2022

The past’s extreme ocean heat waves are now the new normal

More than half the global ocean experiences high temperatures that were rare a century ago

Yesterday’s scorching ocean extremes are today’s new normal. A new analysis of surface ocean temperatures over the past 150 years reveals that in 2019, 57 percent of the ocean’s surface experienced temperatures rarely seen a century ago, researchers report February 1 in PLOS Climate.

To provide context for the frequency and duration of modern extreme heat events, marine ecologists Kisei Tanaka, now at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Honolulu, and Kyle Van Houtan, now at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, Fla., analyzed monthly sea-surface temperatures from 1870 through 2019, mapping where and when extreme heat events occurred decade to decade.

Looking at monthly extremes rather than annual averages revealed new benchmarks in how the ocean is changing. More and more patches of water hit extreme temperatures over time, the team found. Then, in 2014, the entire ocean hit the “point of no return,” Van Houtan says. Beginning that year, at least half of the ocean’s surface waters saw temperatures hotter than the most extreme events from 1870 to 1919.

In hot water

A new analysis of monthly sea surface temperatures across the global ocean reveals how more and more patches of ocean saw heat extremes every year. These four decadal snapshots show temperature shifts since 1980. Beginning in 2014, more than half of the ocean began to reach extremes hotter than even the most extreme events from 1870 to 1919.

Changes in sea surface temperatures, 1980–2019
four maps showing changes in sea surface temperatures by decade from 1980 to 2019
K.R. TANAKA AND K.S. VAN HOUTAN/PLOS CLIMATE 2022

Marine heat waves are defined as at least five days of unusually high temperatures for a patch of ocean. Heat waves wreak havoc on ocean ecosystems, leading to seabird starvation, coral bleaching, dying kelp forests, and migration of fish, whales and turtles in search of cooler waters (SN: 1/15/20; SN: 8/10/20).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hottest ocean temperatures in history recorded last year

January 16, 2022

Hottest ocean temperatures in history recorded last year

Ocean heating driven by human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, in sixth consecutive year record has been broken

An oil platform stands offshore as cargo shipping container ships wait in the Pacific Ocean to enter the port of Los Angeles.
An oil platform stands offshore as cargo shipping container ships wait in the Pacific Ocean to enter the port of Los Angeles. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

The world’s oceans have been set to simmer, and the heat is being cranked up. Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research.

The heating up of our oceans is being primarily driven by the human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, and represents a starkly simple indicator of global heating. While the atmosphere’s temperature is also trending sharply upwards, individual years are less likely to be record-breakers compared with the warming of the oceans.

A firefighter sprays water as a house burns in the Dixie fire in the Indian Falls area of Plumas County, California.
Climate crisis: last seven years the hottest on record, 2021 data shows
Read more

Last year saw a heat record for the top 2,000 meters of all oceans around the world, despite an ongoing La Niña event, a periodic climatic feature that cools waters in the Pacific. The 2021 record tops a stretch of modern record-keeping that goes back to 1955. The second hottest year for oceans was 2020, while the third hottest was 2019.

“The ocean heat content is relentlessly increasing, globally, and this is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change,” said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and co-author of the research, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Warmer ocean waters are helping supercharge storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall, the paper states, which is escalating the risks of severe flooding. Heated ocean water expands and eats away at the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which are collectively shedding around 1tn tons of ice a year, with both of these processes fueling sea level rise.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As Disease Ravages Coral Reefs, Scientists Scramble for Solutions

January 10, 2019

A research diver looks for signs of stony coral tissue loss disease in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

A research diver looks for signs of stony coral tissue loss disease in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. JIM ABERNETHY

As Disease Ravages Coral Reefs, Scientists Scramble for Solutions

As oceans warm, coral reefs are suffering not only from bleaching but from deadly outbreaks of disease. Researchers are developing remedies, but the key question is whether these solutions can work on a large-enough scale to save vast reef systems from Florida to Australia.

In September 2014, William Precht received an alarming phone call. “I’m seeing something funky out on the reef,” a colleague reported. “It looks like disease.” At the time, Precht, a marine biologist and environmental consultant working in coral reef restoration, had been monitoring a Port of Miami dredging project to ensure preservation of the nearby ecosystem. When Precht donned his scuba gear and dove to the site to investigate a few weeks later he couldn’t believe what he found. “The whole reef was lit up in disease,” he recounts. There were more than 30 coral colonies (each 4 to 16 inches across) with white bands and lines on them, and other corals were entirely white. “You could see this line of mortality moving across the reef — I was blown away.”

Precht was witnessing the early signs of a new and rapidly spreading coral disease outbreak sweeping along the Florida coastline, threatening the third-largest reef ecosystem in the world. The outbreak first appeared in pockets of diseased coral near Miami. Four years later, it covers 96,000 acres of reef extending about 275 miles from West Palm Beach to the lower Florida Keys. By some estimates, as much as 35 percent of the coral population has been lost. Several species have nearly vanished, including majestic colonies of pillar corals (Dendrogyra cylindrus), a threatened species that can reach heights from 6 to nearly 10 feet. The few surviving colonies are now known as “the last unicorns.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Inundated by Snow Down to Greece & Harvard Study Shows Oceans Are Getting Colder

January 8, 2019

Europe Inundated by Snow Down to Greece & Harvard Study Shows Oceans Are Getting Colder

This winter is once again extremely brutal in Europe. Extremely heavy snow has fallen as far south as Greece in the range of even 3 to 5 feet in various places. This is the third year of extreme cold in Europe which has been fueling more resentment about global warming taxes. Once again, Europe has been thrown into economic chaos for much of the region is not able to cope with snow lacking the historical experience.

Meanwhile, scientists have revealed that the oceans are still getting colder at deeper levels in a slow-moving trend that was set in motion by the last Little Ice Age. The idea that the oceans have been retaining the heat so that is why the planet has not warmed up as forecast 30 years ago flies in the face of those ideas as well.

The Real Lesson of Katrina: the Worst is Yet to Come

August 27, 2015

The Real Lesson of Katrina: the Worst is Yet to Come

Three weeks and three days before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans 10 years ago, a paper of mine appeared in the scientific journal Nature.

It showed that North Atlantic hurricane power was strongly correlated with the temperature of the tropical Atlantic during hurricane season, and that both had been increasing rapidly over the previous 30 years or so. It attributed these increases to a combination of natural climate oscillations and to global warming.

Had Katrina not occurred, this paper and another by an independent team would merely have contributed to the slowly accumulating literature on the relationship between climate and hurricanes.

Instead, the two papers inspired a media firestorm, polarizing popular opinion and, to some extent, scientists themselves, on whether global warming was in some way responsible for Katrina.

While the firestorm was mostly destructive, benefiting only the media, it had a silver lining in inspiring a much more concerted effort by atmospheric and climate scientists to understand how hurricanes influence and are influenced by climate.

We have learned much in the intervening years.

no-hurricane-katrina-satimage-20050829_uwisc-cimss

Sea Level and Storm Surges

An obvious point is that slowly rising sea levels increase the probability of storm-induced surges even when the statistics of the storms, such as top wind speed, themselves remain stable. Storm surges are physically the same thing as tsunamis but driven by wind and atmospheric pressure rather than the shaking seafloor, and they typically arrive near the peak of the storm’s fury.

As with Katrina and Sandy, they are often the most destructive aspects of hurricanes. Had Sandy struck New York a century ago, there would have been substantially less flooding, as sea level was then roughly a foot lower. As sea level increases at an accelerating pace, we can expect more devastating coastal flooding from storms.

 

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

July Was Warmest Month On Record NOAA Reports, Lists All “Signifiicant Climate Anomalies And Events”

August 20, 2015

July Was Warmest Month On Record NOAA Reports, Lists All “Signifiicant Climate Anomalies And Events”

While some, perhaps not California farmers, will disagree with NOAA’s assessment of the world’s atmospheric conditions, earlier today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared that July was the warmest month ever recorded for the globe and was also the record warmest for global oceans, putting a full stop to a year that has been characterized by numerous perplexing atmospheric outliers around the globe but perhaps none other more so than NOAA’s earlier assessment that the winter of 2015 was also the warmest on record despite the much discussed US winter, where for the second year in a row the economic slowdown was blamed on a colder than usual winter. Go figure: perhaps here too we need double seasonal adjustments.

Among some of the highlights noted by NOAA:

  • The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for July 2015 was the highest for July in the 136-year period of record, at 0.81°C (1.46°F) above the 20th century average of 15.8°C (60.4°F), surpassing the previous record set in 1998 by 0.08°C (0.14°F). As July is climatologically the warmest month of the year globally, this monthly global temperature of 16.61°C (61.86°F) was also the highest among all 1627 months in the record that began in January 1880. The July temperature is currently increasing at an average rate of 0.65°C (1.17°F) per century.
  • The July globally-averaged land surface temperature was 1.73°F (0.96°C) above the 20th century average. This was the sixth highest for July in the 1880–2015 record.
  • The July globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 1.35°F (0.75°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest temperature for any month in the 1880–2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in July 2014 by 0.13°F (0.07°C). The global value was driven by record warmth across large expanses of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress