The ocean surface is heated four times faster than in the 80s

He heating From the ocean surface it has quadrupled in the last four decades, according to a study by the British Reading University collected on Tuesday in the Environmental Research Letters magazine.

At the end of the 1980s, the temperature of the oceans It increased at a rate of 0.06 degrees Celsius per decade, while now does it to 0.27 degrees every ten years.

That would explain, according to the authors, the high unprecedented oceanic temperatures that were recorded in 2023 and early 2024.

“If the oceans were a water bath, we could say that in the 1980s the hot tap opened slowly, heating the water only a grade fraction every decade. Now the tap opens much faster and warming is accelerated, ”explains one of the authors, Chris Merchant, an ocean researcher and climate change at Reading University.

Merchant emphasizes that there is only one way of “stopping ocean heating: start closing the hot tap, reducing global carbon dioxide emissions and moving towards zero net emissions”, That is, not to emit more than the planet can absorb for its natural mechanisms.

Energy imbalance

According to the authors, the accelerated warming of the oceans is due to the growing energy imbalance of the Earth, whereby the terrestrial system absorbs more energy from the sun than space escapes.

This imbalance has doubled since 2010, “partly due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere since the earth now reflects less sunlight to space than before”.

World oceanic temperatures reached historical maximums for 450 days in a row in 2023 and early 2024.

Although that warming may have to do with the child, scientists compared it with another period of this Pacific’s own natural phenomenon, in 2015-16, and discovered that the rest of the record of the period 23-24 is only explained because the surface The sea has heated faster in the last 10 years than in previous decades.

44% of the high temperatures of the ocean surface in 2023 and early 2024 is attributed to the oceans absorbing heat at an accelerated pacethe researchers indicate.

More warming

The results show that the global ocean heating rhythm observed in recent decades is not “a precise guide of what will happen in the future”, and warn of the possibility that the increase in the temperature of the surface of the registered sea In the last 40 years it is exceeded in just 20 years.

Since the ocean surface marks the rhythm of global warming, its temperature is very significant for the climate as a whole.

“This accelerated warming of the seas warns us of the urgency of reducing the burning of fossil fuels to avoid even faster temperature increases in the future and stabilize the climate,” Merchant concludes in a statement from the Reading University.