Ocean temperatures around the world are “headed off the charts,” according to scientists, who say that April set an all-time high.
The average temperature since the start of April has been 21.1C, the scientists say, beating the previous high of 21C in 2016. They base their reporting on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The high surface temperatures can lead to marine heatwaves around the globe.
NOAA reports that ocean surface temperatures are the highest since they started taking satellite records.
“The current trajectory looks like it’s headed off the charts, smashing previous records,” Professor Matthew England, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales, told The Guardian.
And the situation may get worse. An El Niño pattern in the Pacific later this year could cause extreme weather conditions and result in more heat records around the world. NOAA records say the second-hottest global ocean temperature coincided with El Niño from 2014 to 2016.
The NOAA satellite data has been verified by data from ships and buoys around the world. It does not include data from the polar regions.
The problem is that 90 percent of extra heat caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and deforestation ends up in the ocean. A study last year said that the amount of new heat in the ocean was accelerating and penetrating deeper.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a scholar at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, said that new measurements show that heat in the tropical Pacific was extending down to more than 100 meters.
And Dr. Alex Sen Gupta, also at the University of New South Wales, said that satellites showed that the rise in ocean surface temperatures has been “almost linear” since the 1980s. Read more:
