A recent study conducted by a team of 24 scientists from 16 institutes mainly in China, the United States, and Italy, and published in the international journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences has shown that the world has continued to see ocean heat reaching new records after 2022 was the warmest in recorded human history.
As at last year, the upper 2,000 meters of the Earth’s oceans have absorbed a larger amount of heat that’s “enough to boil 700 million kettles, each containing 1.5 liters of water,” said Cheng Lijing, an author of the study and researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Ocean warming remains a key indicator for quantifying climate change as more than 90 percent of global heat ends up in the oceans and the scientist believes that the increase in heat within the oceans is further proof of global warming.
Due to the ocean’s delayed response to global warming, the trend of ocean temperatures will persist for decades, especially as records for ocean warming have been broken almost yearly since 2017, Cheng noted.
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But temperatures was not the only thing that has changed in the ocean. The study calculated the salinity of ocean water, and it found that areas of high salinity had an increase in salinity, whereas the opposite was true for areas of lower salinity.
The study says the “The salty gets saltier, while the fresh gets fresher” pattern also reached its highest level on record in 2022.
The implication of warmer oceans is that it could lead to sea level rises and more extreme weather, such as strong storms and hurricanes and they would also become less efficient at absorbing carbon, causing more human-emitted carbon dioxide to remain in the atmosphere, exacerbating global warming.
Better awareness and understanding of the changes in ocean heat and salinity are a basis for the actions to combat climate change, Cheng added, explaining the significance of the study.
Scientists also shared ocean data recorded last year by the Chinese institute and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the study.
Story was adapted from People’s Daily People’s Daily
