World's oceans hit record heat as El Niño strengthens
Oceans hit highest temperature on record
Global ocean surface temperatures outside the polar regions reached 21.1°C on Saturday, surpassing the previous record set in March 2024, according to the European Copernicus climate service. The record comes unusually early in the year, as El Niño is still strengthening and expected to peak around Christmas. Scientists warn that this early spike signals a powerful El Niño and underscores the long-term warming trend driven by human emissions, with severe implications for extreme weather, sea levels, and marine life.
This record is another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress.
- neom
BBC did a pretty good deep dive a few days ago on what we're in for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xZCh8eDZFc
DW also, similar stuff, but the guest is quite good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcl5Mn373Oc
Anton Petrov covered it from a much more science lens a couple months back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRoU3whzX_Q
- cdrnsf
Meanwhile governments are electing to either do nothing or actively make the problem worse (particularly in the case of the US — expanding fossil fuel extraction, pushing data center build out and attacking renewables like wind).
- lbriner
When I was younger, I remember thinking, "a few degrees, what difference does that make?" Then when I grew older I realised that in Climate science a few degrees is the difference between survival and annihilation. A few degrees warmer in the ocean and El Niño becomes an incredible problem for half the world.
I am glad that I live far away from the effects but it is sad to think of people losing all kinds of things for the lack of respect of Mother Earth!
- thelastgallon
With the growth in solar, it is easy to think that we can solve it, we just do more renewables, but the decline of fossil fuels is negligible: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7438918221...
Globally, fossil fuels supply 81.1% today (2023). Only marginally down from 81.4% in 2000. Fossil fuels are not on track to end by 2050. But rather in 4-10 centuries.
- asphodele
With less ice around than there used to be, the same incident energy can do a lot more ocean heating. It takes 80 calories to convert 1 gram of ice at 0C to 1 gram of water at 0C. Once the ice is melted, a further 80 calories can raise the temperature of the gram of water at 0C to 80C
- willmeyers
This El Niño is going to be interesting come Christmas time. Lot's of weather and climate unpredictability coming to a region near you!
- gmuslera
"highest temperature on record"... so far.
There are still ~4 months till peak El Niño, and then some months to spread effects.
- zero-sharp
I remember watching a documentary which talked about feedback loops in the climate. It might have been in the context of history. If the ocean warms up enough, it causes the CO2 in the ocean itself (either in the deposits or the gas saturated in the water) to get released into the atmosphere. Maybe I'm not using the right technical words, but there is a certain amount of CO2 that sits within the ocean that is separate from the atmosphere. In any case, after a certain point it becomes a feedback loop: warmer climate -> more CO2 joins the atmosphere -> warmer climate.
- jgord
Recent studies estimate climate warming is happening faster than it was, ballpark +0.3C per decade.
As we are at or nearing +1.5C now, with global emissions at an all time high [ perhaps peaking soon ] theres a good chance we are headed toward +2.6C by ~2060.
Keep in mind the CO2 stays up there for a long time, centuries, so when we get to net-zero its max-CO2 and therefore max-heat.
- cb321
The "scatter line plot" in TFA is all same shade of red on white with no year labels. This seems like a missed visualization opportunity. Using some kind of color scheme/gradient to represent the 1979-2026 years in a way that can show long-term "trend". (A 50 frame movie at, say, 5 fps with same axes or maybe "all years" as faded background as the current year pops around in bold is another possibility, but a scientific paper format doesn't let people do .mp4s.) I know I've seen multi-colored "scatter lines" in IPCC reports. Seemed worth asking rather than doing it myself.