Prof. John Abraham Discusses Accelerated Ocean Temperature Warming and Heat Content

Last year was the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average. Since 90% of global warming is occurring in the ocean, due to the earth’s rising energy imbalance resulting from continuing and increasing GHG emissions, not surprisingly research published in “Environmental Research Letters” in late January concluded ocean temperatures for the 450 day period between April ’23 and July ’24 were the warmest ever. Ocean surface temperatures are now warming 40 times faster than 40 years ago. As I’ve noted in previous discussions with Prof. Abraham, because warming oceans/ocean heat content plays a fundamental role in our planet’s energy, water and carbon cycles, warming ocean temperatures disrupt marine life that substantially threaten the availability of food we eat and the oxygen we breathe.

The “Environmental Research Letters” article, “Quantifying the Acceleration of Muti-decadal Global Sea Surface Warming Driven by Earth’s Energy Imbalance,” is at: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/adaa8a/pdf.