The past year has been one of the hottest in history and the warmest year on record for Earth’s oceans, scientists announce.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have collected their annual estimates, which, along with an oceanographic analysis from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics / Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP / CAS), have been published by the journal Science , and they highlight a record temperature in the oceans.
According to NASA, 2017 was the second warmest on record , with global temperatures 0.90 degrees Celsius above average in the period 1951-1980. For its part, NOAA ranked it third, with temperatures of 0.84 degrees Celsius above the average for the entire 20th century.
But why are the estimates of the two agencies different?
The discrepancies in the NASA and NOAA rankings are due to differences in the way researchers interpret temperature readings from limited weather stations in the Arctic, which has seen rapid warming in recent decades.
That trend is in line with ongoing human-driven climate change. Overall, 17 of the 18 warmest years since 1880 came from 2001 , and the last three were noticeably warmer than the previous decade.
However, scientists point out that the temperatures of 2015 and 2016 increased due to the presence of El Niño , a climate phenomenon related to the warming of the Pacific.
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The ocean accumulates most of the warming derived from human activities; Specifically, more than 90% of the Earth’s residual heat related to global warming is absorbed by the ocean.
According to IAP’s ocean analysis, the past five years have been the warmest for the ocean. Therefore, the long-term warming trend driven by human activities continued to grow, despite the efforts of governments to reduce global warming.
The consequences of a warmer ocean
A warmer ocean also affects sea level: increases in ocean temperature cause the ocean volume to expand.
Other consequences include declining oxygen in the ocean, bleaching of coral reefs, and melting of sea ice and ice shelves.
It is worth mentioning that, in their first year under President Donald Trump, NASA and NOAA released their uncensored estimates, despite the White House’s critical view of international regulations and agreements aimed at curbing global warming.
