Ocean warming accelerates and intensifies natural disasters — study

Photo by: RyuSeungil / iStock

More than 90% of the heat from greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed by the ocean, causing its own temperature to rise at an accelerating rate. This is the conclusion reached by a team of scientists from Australia, New Zealand, China, the UK, France and the USA. The study has been published in the scientific journal Nature Reviews: Earth and Environment.

The oceanographers analysed historical temperature records at different depths of the ocean and various climate models predicting future changes.

They found that the rate at which the upper layers of water up to 2 kilometres thick are warming has doubled since the 1960s.

Scientists also found that the heat stored in the ocean was increasing temperatures and affecting marine life.

The devastating floods in eastern Australia in 2022 probably would not have been so severe if the ocean had not warmed, according to one of the report’s authors.

The report says that even with the strongest human action to reduce emissions, by 2100 average global ocean temperatures will be at least twice what they are today.

“Warming oceans are already causing flooding, melting ice and rising sea levels, and damaging coral reefs and ecosystems. Without reducing emissions, it will only get worse,” said Professor Matt England, co-author of the review and oceanographer at the University of New South Wales.

Dr Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research noted that at the current rate of warming, the world’s oceans absorb 80 times as much energy annually as the world’s total electricity production over the same period in the form of heat.

“Even if we reach carbon neutrality by 2050, ocean heat content will continue to rise and sea levels will rise over the next couple of centuries,” the scientist added.

According to independent experts, the international panel’s findings are broadly in line with previous UN estimates, but contain more accurate predictions of future changes.

According to the data presented, from 1971 to 2018, human activity caused the amount of energy released into the world’s oceans every second, roughly equal in power to the explosions of three atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.

In addition to the climate effect, sea heat waves, combined with global warming, are affecting marine life, causing mass deaths of plants and animals.

Cover photo: RyuSeungil / iStock