Hottest Ocean Temperatures In History Recorded Last Year (theguardian.com) 64
Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research. The Guardian reports: The heating up of our oceans is being primarily driven by the human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, and represents a starkly simple indicator of global heating. While the atmosphere's temperature is also trending sharply upwards, individual years are less likely to be record-breakers compared with the warming of the oceans. Last year saw a heat record for the top 2,000 meters of all oceans around the world, despite an ongoing La Nina event, a periodic climatic feature that cools waters in the Pacific. The 2021 record tops a stretch of modern record-keeping that goes back to 1955. The second hottest year for oceans was 2020, while the third hottest was 2019.
Warmer ocean waters are helping supercharge storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall, the paper states, which is escalating the risks of severe flooding. Heated ocean water expands and eats away at the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which are collectively shedding around 1tn tons of ice a year, with both of these processes fueling sea level rise. Oceans take up about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity, causing them to acidify. This degrades coral reefs, home to a quarter of the world's marine life and the provider of food for more than 500m people, and can prove harmful to individual species of fish. As the world warms from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other activities, the oceans have taken the brunt of the extra heat. More than 90% of the heat generated over the past 50 years has been absorbed by the oceans, temporarily helping spare humanity, and other land-based species, from temperatures that would already be catastrophic.
The amount of heat soaked up by the oceans is enormous. Last year, the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, where most of the warming occurs, absorbed 14 more zettajoules (a unit of electrical energy equal to one sextillion joules) than it did in 2020. This amount of extra energy is 145 times greater than the world's entire electricity generation which, by comparison, is about half of a zettajoule. Long-term ocean warming is strongest in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, the new research states, although the north Pacific has had a "dramatic" increase in heat since 1990 and the Mediterranean Sea posted a clear high temperature record last year. The research has been published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
Warmer ocean waters are helping supercharge storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall, the paper states, which is escalating the risks of severe flooding. Heated ocean water expands and eats away at the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which are collectively shedding around 1tn tons of ice a year, with both of these processes fueling sea level rise. Oceans take up about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity, causing them to acidify. This degrades coral reefs, home to a quarter of the world's marine life and the provider of food for more than 500m people, and can prove harmful to individual species of fish. As the world warms from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other activities, the oceans have taken the brunt of the extra heat. More than 90% of the heat generated over the past 50 years has been absorbed by the oceans, temporarily helping spare humanity, and other land-based species, from temperatures that would already be catastrophic.
The amount of heat soaked up by the oceans is enormous. Last year, the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, where most of the warming occurs, absorbed 14 more zettajoules (a unit of electrical energy equal to one sextillion joules) than it did in 2020. This amount of extra energy is 145 times greater than the world's entire electricity generation which, by comparison, is about half of a zettajoule. Long-term ocean warming is strongest in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, the new research states, although the north Pacific has had a "dramatic" increase in heat since 1990 and the Mediterranean Sea posted a clear high temperature record last year. The research has been published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
Units (Score:3)
"a unit of electrical energy equal to one sextillion joules"
I'm glad The Guardian used the S.I. definition of "zetta-", rather than the British one. On the other hand, a Joule is a Joule, and though calling it "a unit of /electical/ energy" isn't /wrong/, it definitely indicates the writer is ignorant about physics.
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Sadly, most people, even educated ones are "ignorant about Physics". It is just not regarded as anything worth knowing or remembering by most people.
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Sadly, most people, even educated ones are "ignorant about Physics". It is just not regarded as anything worth knowing or remembering by most people.
Agreed. And even as a professional in physics, that doesn't offend me. What /does/ is a journalist and paper which doesn't check or edit these things (this includes---strangely---YOU, slashdot).
Re: Units (Score:2)
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Sadly, most people, even educated ones are "ignorant about Physics". It is just not regarded as anything worth knowing or remembering by most people.
Agreed. And even as a professional in physics, that doesn't offend me. What /does/ is a journalist and paper which doesn't check or edit these things (this includes---strangely---YOU, slashdot).
Agreed. As a CS/Engineering type I do not expect people to understand computers/software/etc. either. What does offend me is when supposedly reputable news sources write nonsense. They at least need to make sure they have their facts straight. If they do not have experts on a topic and no access to experts, then they should refrain from writing about it.
The German weekly "DER SPIEGEL" recently had an article about what they do: They have about 50 domain-expert "Fact Checkers" that make sure they at the very
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It is just not regarded as anything worth knowing or remembering by most people.
Most difficult things fall into that category. Physics is also terrible to write about because at a certain point there is no way to provide a layperson with a satisfactory analogy for many every day physical processes. As they are quite unintuitive under the hood and take a fair amount of abstract math to understand. (like magnetism [youtube.com])
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It is just not regarded as anything worth knowing or remembering by most people.
Most difficult things fall into that category. Physics is also terrible to write about because at a certain point there is no way to provide a layperson with a satisfactory analogy for many every day physical processes. As they are quite unintuitive under the hood and take a fair amount of abstract math to understand. (like magnetism [youtube.com])
True. But it is still disappointing how little interest and understanding most people have regarding the physical reality we live in. And it is not lack of opportunity to learn.
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The Grauniad actually employs pretty decent science writers so I'd put it down to being a typo since they're comparing it to generated electrical energy in the next sentence.
Having said that, if it really upsets you that much, ping them about it, they're pretty good about correcting things.
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Electrical Energy is Wrong (Score:3)
calling it "a unit of /electical/ energy" isn't /wrong/
It is in this case because they are talking about heat energy....unless they think the top layer of the ocean is acting as some sort of giant electrical capacitor. I'm also curious what you think the British definition of "zetta-" is. I am British and the only definition I have ever seen is completely consistent with the SI definition.
Re: Electrical Energy is Wrong (Score:2)
I've never heard of an energy unit called Joule (uppercase) either. Joule (upper) is a famous physicist, whereas joule (lower) is an energy unit named after him.
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I assume they are somehow referring to long (obsolete British) versus short (modern British and international) billions, trillions, etc.
I wondered that too but it would not make any sense because that only applied to numbers and never units.
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" It is also the energy dissipated as heat when an electric current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second."
Re: Units (Score:2)
oh well (Score:3)
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What a strange load of whining.
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https://xkcd.com/2278/ [xkcd.com]
Toast (Score:4, Interesting)
That trillion tons of ice melting off the poles? That's becoming a trillion tons of ice water, which is slowly drifting towards the equator, causing extra-cold weather in the higher latitudes, and is slowly being heated by the zetajoules of energy mentioned above.
When we run out of ice at the poles, things are going to heat up even faster. This could happen in the Arctic by 2035, but Antarctica will take a while longer.
We've doubled the population of the earth over the last 40 years, we can cut it in half again even faster.
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"we can cut it in half again even faster."
Even if we don't , the enviroment eventually will. No amount of agri science can get crops to grow in a desert where there's no water supply and desertification is happening rapidly around the world.
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Doubtful in the US.
The US will lose farmland, but the US tends to use a lot of farmland to grow crops to feed to meat animals. Cows have an efficiency of 8:1 - 8,000 calories in cattle feed to get 1,000 calories of beef. Chicken and pork are a little better - say 3.5:1 - 3,500 calories in chicken/pig feed to get 1,000 calories out.
That gives us a pretty healthy buffer, considering how meat-heavy our diet tends to be.
And next year, we'll have another (Score:2, Interesting)
Welcome to the new normal. Life in the next 20-50 years will be... interesting.
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Plants will become more toxic. [youtu.be]
It's coming ... (Score:1)
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You sound a little angry about something there. Drink more water.
Stop voting for climate change deniers (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop voting for the Trumps, the Bolsanaros, the Orbans, the Berlusconis, in short, the assholes who lie to your face about the climate crisis and are only interested in using the power of office to further their own interests and protect the business interests of their friends in big business.
Remember that there are "think tanks" like the Heartland Institute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
that lobby and fight tooth and nail to spread FUD around the public like "smoking is not that bad for you" or "climate change can also be a good thing". Move away from parties that support and are supported by these interests.
I don't want to be partisan, but unfortunately most of this activity of deception and manipulation of the public for the worst originates in conservative circles.
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Stop voting for the Trumps, the Bolsanaros, the Orbans, the Berlusconis, in short, the assholes who lie to your face about the climate crisis and are only interested in using the power of office to further their own interests and protect the business interests of their friends in big business.
don't want to be partisan, but unfortunately most of this activity of deception and manipulation of the public for the worst originates in conservative circles.
Where the rubber meets the road it isn't about denialism or alarmism its about policy.
One side wants to pretend no action is the best course of action.
The other side says climate change is an "existential crisis", wants to outlaw or punish SDUs, burgers, and personal vehicles while giving themselves unlimited power to demand citizens standards of living be placed on a "diet".
Until there is meaningful change in the politics and a policy that prioritizes R&D and credible paths to solving problems in ways
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How about we compromise by not outlawing anything but just enacting a comprehensive carbon tax and carbon tariff, on a schedule that starts very mild but after a few years begins increasing steeply and without limit? Oh, and allow the tax to be a credit for anyone who can take CO2 out of the air and sequester it for at least 100 years. Then we sit back and let the market drive carbon emissions to zero and below.
If it helps get protectionists on board, we can even move the carbon tariff schedule up a bit,
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The other side says climate change is an "existential crisis", wants to outlaw or punish SDUs, burgers, and personal vehicles while giving themselves unlimited power to demand citizens standards of living be placed on a "diet".
This is just a strawman - an extreme caricature of the actual policy the Democrats want to implement. That said, it doesn't take much imagination to see how this turns into an existential crisis. IE, massive refugee movements due to drought, heat waves, and whatnot causes international instability, nations start warring over dwindling resources, we nuke each other to oblivion... the planet will continue to exist, humanity *probably* won't go extinct, but is that really a scenario you're willing to accept?
Ho
Wrong. (Score:2)
THE REAL PROBLEM, are the idiots that continue to shut down nuclear power plants as well as work to stop new 4th gen reactors while screaming about AGW. As it is, China and Russia will be selling a bunch of these. But the west will not due to the far left Marxists (such as the goon squad like AOC) who are doing what China and Russia wants them to do.
We NEED nuclear energy, along with geothermal, for baseload power. In addition, w
Consequences (Score:1, Troll)
I wonder if, after irreversible damage has been done to human civilization and the ecosphere due to climate change, it will become legal to hunt the offspring of those who opposed efforts to mitigate the destruction and remove them from the gene pool one way or another.
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" it will become legal to hunt the offspring"
If you believe in sins of the father being passed down then fine. But you'd better check your own family history first particularly if you're american because I'd bet good money some of them either owned slaves or helped kill some of the natives or steal their land.
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I'm not American, thank god. Also, I don't believe in the sins of the father being passed down. But neither do I believe the father's ill-gotten gains should give their offspring an advantage over everybody else when it comes to survival in a damaged world.
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All our ancestors had ill gotten gains. Some of mine came in with the Norman invasion of england in 1066 but I don't plan on finding some pure descent anglo saxons and offering them recompense. And they won't be coughing up for what their ancestors in turn did to the celts in the 8th century either.
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I doubt your ancestors, or mine, helped devastate a whole planetary ecosystem for no better reason than overwhelming greed.
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I see the right wing trolls with their multiple accounts and seemingly unlimited mod points have been hard at work. Slashdot better figure this one out before the whole site is ruined.
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No, but legality will become irrelevant when governments collapse.
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Did they have data on the coldest points?
No they only record rising temperatures.
FFS they record *temperature*. Do you think they can't find both the maximum AND minimum of those lists?
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You are welcome to supply evidence.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/glob... [noaa.gov]
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"Worse" is no more scientific a term than "supercharge". You have to look at a number of specific factors that may change for tropical cyclones:(1) Frequency, (2) Wind Speed, (3) Geographic Extent, (4) Intersection of track with Human Settlements, (5) Track Speed, (6) Rainfall intensity.
It's quite possible to have change that's a mixed bag. For example a more intense Atlantic hurricane that turns north and never makes landfall might as well not exist with respect to whether *humans* judge the situation t
Warm Ocean Water holds Less (Score:4, Interesting)
OCEAN Temperature latency (Score:4, Insightful)
Temperatures in ocean water lag ambient temperature. Acting as a heatsink the deep oceans are 40yrs. behind and possibly overshoot decades after ambient temperatures plateau, if
“Most of the excess heat from climate change will go into the ocean eventually, we think,” Romanou said. “Most of the excess chemical pollutants and greenhouse gases will be buried in the ocean. But the truth is that the ocean recirculates that extra load and, at some point, will release some of it back to the atmosphere, where it will keep raising temperatures, even if future carbon dioxide emissions were to be much lower than they are now.” per cite https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
https://cp.copernicus.org/arti... [copernicus.org] cites Atlantic at 50-70yr.
multidecadal Atlantic meridional overturning circulation variations on the Southern Ocean.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.... [wiley.com] cites AGW autocorrelation with sea temperature ramp up and down.
I can ignore the "debates" from now on (Score:2)
After this last year in British Columbia (town burned down, then flooded a few months later), there's no more need for discussion. The Heartland Institute and various wingnuts can prattle all they want, but democratic critical mass has decidedly flipped at this point.
There's another factor. Just as the optics of climate problems have overwhelmed the merchants of doubt, the cost-benefit equations on various green technologies have also passed the 50/50 mark, and only inertia is keeping furnaces over heat p
Additionally we need Oxygen (Score:1)
Good thing we disregard (Score:2)
...history.
Look at paleotemperatures.
We see at least 30 instances in the last 5 million years of periodic spikes in CO2 and temp (in FACT, we don't know which is causal) and in each case what happened? It settled back to the Holocene optimal.
So if I understand correctly, we are
- assuming THAT cycle completely stopped
- it was replaced pretty much exactly on time with our current spike caused by Republicans, SUVs, and Donald Trump.
- the feedback mechanisms that resulted will not work this time
Is that correct
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We've got us here a goddamned modern /Cicero/ with that persuasive rhetoric.
I'm going to guess you post on Facebook a lot?
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We see at least 30 instances in the last 5 million years of periodic spikes in CO2 and temp (in FACT, we don't know which is causal)
The causal relationship between greenhouse gases and the earth's temperature has been understood since the 1800's. You don't have to read all the latest and greatest climate science to understand what's going on, but you should at least come up to speed on the basic principles that have been around for over a century if you expect to be taken seriously.
For that matter, how do you think scientists estimate the temperatures from geological history? From the very same climate models that you are using geologic
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" If you trust climate estimates for 5 million years ago, why don't you trust those same climate estimates when they are pointed 10 or 100 years into the future?"
Because 'predicting' what's already happened is a lot easier than foretelling the future?
I'm pretty sure even 1st graders understand that?
To answer you seriously though: going backwards we have actual things to measure, like dendrochronology and Vostok cores.
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Nobody from 5 million years ago is still alive, my friend. We don't have any 5 million-year-old thermometers. What we have is core samples from which we can determine isotope abundance. We can then extrapolate from change in relative abundance and figure out what the climate conditions must have been at the time in order to produce that abundance.
None of it works without reliable climate modeling though. There's very little difference from projecting current climate into the past based on a few datapoints i