Jay Jinism (via Getty)
For nearly a year now, a strange heating phenomenon has been unfolding in oceans around the world. Global sea surface temperatures in March 2023 Began to update daily high records It has remained that way ever since.
The orange line below shows the year 2023, and the other gray lines are previous years. That solid black line is where 2024 is so far, well above 2023. Although we’re not even close to Atlantic hurricane season, which starts June 1st and runs through the fall, remember that cyclones feed on warmer waters. This water is likely to remain unusually hot for months to come. In any case, these surface temperature anomalies may already pose significant ecological problems.
“In the tropical eastern Atlantic Ocean, it’s four months ahead, so it looks like it’s already happening.” June ” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. “It’s getting really weird that records are this long and being updated this much.”
These graphs and maps show that the temperature anomaly could be 1-2 degrees Celsius higher, which may not seem like a big deal. But for the ocean, it really is. Unlike land, which heats and cools rapidly as day turns to night and back again, it takes a lot of time to warm up the ocean, which can be thousands of feet deep. Therefore, even abnormalities that are only a fraction of the size are important. “It’s pretty exceptional to get into second, third or fourth degree, like some places do,” McNoldy said.
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So what’s going on here? First, the oceans have been steadily warming for decades, absorbing about 90 percent of the extra heat humans add to the atmosphere. “The ocean is, in a sense, our savior,” says Francisco Chavez, a biological oceanographer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. “In terms of climate impacts, it could be even worse, because much of that heat will not only stay at the surface, but also be taken deep down.”
The main concerns regarding such high surface temperatures are: The health of the ecosystem floating there: Phytoplankton that blooms by absorbing the energy of the sun, and small zooplankton that feed on it. If temperatures get too hot, certain species can suffer. Shaking the foundations of the ocean food web.
