Oceans were hottest ever in 2022, says study

New Delhi: The world’s oceans in 2022 were recorded to have been the hottest ever, showing the extent to which human caused emissions have impacted the climate of the planet, according to a scientific analyses.

Temperatures at the ocean surface have a strong bearing on the weather. Hotter oceans exacerbate extremities in weather which lead to intense hurricanes and typhoons and increase moisture in air which causes more intense rains and flooding. Warmer water also expands more which in turn causes rising sea level which threats coastal settlements.

Why are Oceans heating up?

Natural climate has less effect on ocean temperature than the temperature of the atmosphere. Greenhouse emissions cause the rise of temperature in the atmosphere. More than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed in the oceans.

“If you want to measure global warming, you want to measure where the warming goes, and over 90% goes into the oceans”, Prof John Abraham, University of St Thomas in Minnesota and the part of the analyses team, was quoted as saying according to a Guardian report.

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“Measuring the oceans is the most accurate way of determining how out of balance our planet is.

“We are getting more extreme weather because of the warming oceans and that has tremendous consequences all around the world.”

Prof Michael Mann, at the University of Pennsylvania, also part of the team, said, “Warmer oceans mean there is more potential for bigger precipitation events, like we’ve seen this past year in Europe, Australia, and currently on the west coast of the US.”

There is an even deeper layer of warm water on the ocean surface, Mann said, according to the analyses.

“This leads to greater and more rapid intensification of hurricanes – something we’ve also seen this past year – since the winds no longer churn up cold sub-surface water that would otherwise dampen intensification.”

Many extreme weather events in 2022 like the heavy rain that caused devastating floods in Chad, Niger and Nigeria were made more likely or intense by the climate crisis, according to the research released on Monday by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The analyses used temperature data collected by a range of instruments across the oceans and combined separate analyses by Chinese and US teams to calculate the heat content of the top 2,000 metres, where most of the heating occurs,” according to the Guardian report.

“The oceans absorbed about 10 zettajoules more heat in 2022 than in 2021, equivalent to every person on Earth running 40 hairdryers all day, every day”, the report added.

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