High sea temperatures contributed to stormy time in California at the end of 2023
Images Kevin Carter / Getty
The ocean temperature thrust Record levels in 2023 and 2024 is a sign that the pace of climate change has accelerated, say the researchers.
The global temperatures of the ocean reached record peaks for 450 consecutive days in 2023 and at the beginning of 2024. Although part of the additional heat can be explained by a meteorological scheme of El Niño emerging in the Pacific Ocean, around 44% of the record heat is the hard of the oceans of the world absorbing the heat of the sun at a rate of acceleration, as ocean Chris Merchant At Reading University, United Kingdom.
The merchant and his colleagues have used satellite data to analyze the warming of oceans over the past four decades, concluding that the warming rate has more than quadrupled since 1985.
The team claims that this rapid acceleration is due to a net change in the energy imbalance of the earth (EEI), a measure of the amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere. The EEI has been almost doubled since 2010, which makes the oceans soak up much more warmth than before.
“The oceans gave the pace of global warming in general,” explains Mercihant. “Thus, as an extension, global warming as a whole, including the land, has therefore accelerated.” The merchant says that he is “personally convinced” that the acceleration of climate change was a major factor in the recent increase in temperatures in the ocean.
Based on their analysis, Mercihant and his team predict that the ocean warming rate could continue to increase rapidly in the coming decades. “If the EEI's trend is approaching in the future … then we can expect as much warming over the next 20 years as we have done in the past 40 years, which is a fairly marked acceleration,” explains Mercihant.
Although climate models Expect that the climate change rate acceleratesThe merchant's analysis suggests that the trends in the real world comply with the most pessimistic model predictions. “The fact that this data-based analysis puts us up to what models could have predicted is a question that must be monitored,” he said.
However, the first data suggest that EEI fell in 2024 after a record peak in 2023. These data may suggest that warming rates may not accelerate in accordance with the worst scenarios, according to some researchers.
