Climate change: Recent rapid ocean warming alarms scientists

The recent rapid warming of the world's oceans has alarmed scientists, who fear it will contribute to global warming.

This month, the global sea level reached a new record temperature. He had never warmed up so much, so quickly. Scientists do not fully understand why this happened. However, they fear that, combined with other weather events, the global temperature could reach a new level by the end of next year. Experts believe that a strong El Niño weather phenomenon - a weather system that warms the ocean - will also kick in over the coming months. Warmer oceans can wipe out marine life, lead to more extreme weather and raise sea levels. They are also less effective at absorbing planet-warming greenhouse gases. An important new study, published with little fanfare last week, points to a disturbing development. Over the past 15 years, Earth's stored heat has increased by 50 %, with most of this heat entering the oceans. This has real-world consequences – not only did the overall ocean temperature reach a new record in April this year, but in some regions the difference from the long-term record was huge. In March, sea surface temperatures off the east coast of North America were up to 13.8°C higher than the 1981-2011 average. "It is not yet well known why such rapid changes and such huge changes are happening," said Karina Von Schuckmann, lead author of the new study and an oceanographer at the Mercator Ocean International research group. “Over the last 15 years we've doubled the heat in the climate system, I don't want to say that this is climate change, natural variability or a mixture of both, we don't know yet. But we are seeing this change.” One factor that could affect the level of heat flowing into the oceans is an interesting reduction in pollution from shipping. In 2020, the International Maritime Organization introduced a regulation to reduce the sulfur content of fuel burned by ships. This had a rapid impact and reduced the amount of aerosol particles released into the atmosphere. But the aerosols that pollute the air also help reflect heat back into space—removing them could have caused more heat to enter the waters. (Matt McGrath and Mark Poynting, BBC Climate and Science team)