The international group of climatologists recorded a record increase in the temperature of the ocean in 2021 due to global warming. This is reported in the article published in the Advances magazine in Atmosheric Science.
Scientists analyzed changes in the heat of the world’s ocean for 2021. It turned out that the sea temperature reached record values in the entire history of observations. According to estimates, the ocean has absorbed about 14 zettajoule (14 to 10 in the 21st degree) more than in 2020, which held last record.
The southern and atlantic oceans were heard the strongest, which is due to an increase in the concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases and climatic heat transfer models. In the Indian Ocean, the tropical Atlantic, the North Atlantic, the North-Western part of the Pacific Ocean, the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, the Southern Ocean and the Mediterranean, there is severe warming, but with a distinct inter-annual and ten-year variability. This variability is associated with El Niño – an inter-annual natural cycle, expressed in fluctuations in the temperature of the surface layers of the equatorial part of the ocean and affecting the world climate.
Warm ocean water contributes to strengthening storms, hurricanes and extreme precipitation, which increases the risk of strong floods. The heated ocean water expands and destroys the extensive ice shields of Greenland and Antarctica, which in the aggregate lose about one trillion tons of ice per year. In general, the tendency to heat the ocean is so pronounced that it is possible to identify traces of human influence in just four years of observations.