I really hate to start my blogging day with a "gloom and doom" item, but the graph is quite striking.
Three years of La Niña conditions across the vast tropical Pacific have helped suppress temperatures and dampened the effect of rising greenhouse gas emissions.But scientists said heat was now rising to the ocean surface, pointing to a potential El Niño pattern in the tropical Pacific later this year that can increase the risk of extreme weather conditions and further challenge global heat records...Hotter oceans provide more energy for storms, as well as putting ice sheets at risk and pushing up global sea levels, caused by salt water expanding as it warms.Marine heatwaves can also have devastating effects on marine wildlife and cause coral bleaching on tropical reefs. Experiments have also suggested that warming oceans could radically alter the food web, promoting the growth of algae while lowering the types of species that humans eat..
Discussion and maps continue at The Guardian.
Not quite an all time high - the highest since the 1980s. Not trying to be pedantic but obviously discussions around global warming need to at least remember previous warm periods of history.
ReplyDeleteThe graph depicts data since the 1980s, but humans have kept records since the 1950s, and this is the warmest ever -
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/11/oceans-hottest-temperatures-research-climate-crisis
So when do you think it was higher? And if you say the Pleistocene, then yes, you are being tediously pedantic, anon.
Yes, there was a time when Earth was awash in molten rock, so we need not get too excited about a few degrees.
DeleteWhile I realize it looks quite scary, when you check the scale, you find that it's not like the ocean was ice last year, but boiling this year. Is this a long-term trend. Possibly. But I have more and more come to think the rather than summers getting hotter, say, that it seems that the seasons have shifted somewhat--that what used to be dead summer is not not quite during the same time of the year. I don't know if that is even remotely possible, but it sure seems like it.
ReplyDeleteBig Oil scientists were first made aware that the burning of fossil fuel would create climate change in... 1959. Recently Exxon/Mobil has decided not to deny climate change (too confrontational). Better tactic is to cast doubt: maybe, maybe not, maybe it's the sun, maybe it's cyclical, maybe the data's wrong, maybe it's just political, or your imagination...
DeleteObviously, it's worked.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/181775