Ocean Heat
The Art
The Science
What’s Alarming
Ocean heat content has continued to increase at surface levels where it can be measured and, it is believed, deep into the ocean. The rate of warming has also increased. Rising temperatures are attributable to anthropogenic influences and have numerous impacts, including: a doubling of marine heat waves; stratification of the ocean (causing top layers to be less dense than lower layers, affecting the exchange between surface and deep waters); loss of oxygen; risks to marine organisms impacting food production; more frequent occurrence of harmful algal blooms and thermal expansion which causes sea level to rise. Warmer oceans are also believed to contribute to the intensity of hurricanes.
“A new analysis, published [January, 2022} in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, showed that oceans contained the most heat energy in 2021 since measurements began six decades ago — accelerating at a rate only possible because of human-emitted greenhouse gases.
Since the late 1980s, Earth’s oceans warmed at a rate eight times faster than in the preceding decades.”
Ocean warmth sets record high in 2021 as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, By Kasha Patel, Washington Post, January 11, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/01/13/global-temperature-record-climate-change/
