Marine Heatwave Pushing Northern Oceans' Water Temperatures To Record Highs This Summer

[hatrack]

It's not just land seeing record heat waves. Ocean waters in the Northern Hemisphere have been unusually warm in recent weeks, with parts of the North Atlantic and northern Pacific undergoing particularly intense marine heat waves.

Sea surface temperatures in these regions hit record levels this summer, said Dillon Amaya, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Physical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Parts of the Pacific and North Atlantic have been anywhere from 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) warmer than average at times, conditions that have not been observed since record keeping began roughly six decades ago. "It's been very extreme — some of the hottest temperatures we've seen on record — and they've hung around for several months," Amaya said.

Oceans naturally absorb and store heat, making these reservoirs good indicators of how much the planet is warming. Studies have found that oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the heat trapped on Earth from greenhouse gas emissions since 1970. As climate change causes the pace of ocean warming to accelerate, scientists are concerned about the potential consequences for marine ecosystems, sea-level rise and extreme weather.

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NOAA's annual "State of the Climate" report, released Aug. 31, found that ocean heat, as measured from the surface to a depth of more than 6,000 feet, was the highest on record in 2021.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/intense-marine-heat-wave-setting-ocean-temperature-records-north-atlan-rcna46130

[Random Boomer]

1. We're not turning this around in 10 years

Global feedback loops are rolling, slowly but inexorably, toward a new climate state. Translation: we are so f*cked.