Jan. 11 (UPI) — Earth’s oceans absorbed unprecedented levels of heat responsible for global warming in 2023, fueling a year of adverse climate events around the world, a Chinese-led multinational scientific team reported Thursday.
Analysis by the group of scientists from China, the United States, New Zealand and Italy published in the Advances in Atmospheric Science journal found the oceans heated up by 15 zettajoules relative to 2022 — equivalent to 30 times global annual energy use.
The study of the Ocean Heat Content of the upper 6,500 feet of the oceans, responsible for absorbing about 90% of global warming, showed that between 2013 and 2023 the oceans have been hotter every year than the year before.
The measurement was higher than the 9 zettajoules recorded by the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences team warning that in a warming climate, new ocean temperature highs can get mistakenly set to one side.
“This means that the warming might be greater than the numbers reported here,” lead author Cheng Lijing of China’s Institute of Atmospheric Physics said in a news release.
However, the data from both agencies show long-term warming in the ocean due to global warming and the “blowout record” of ocean surface temperatures is the result of long-term global warming and the short-term fluctuations in water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean due to El Nino.
Both factors are contributing to warmer oceans, with a strong El Nino event in the tropical Pacific building, on top of global warming and climate change, to warm ocean surface temperatures over the past eight months.
The CAS said this was changing weather patterns around the world and the fact that 65 years of similar measurements by both agencies from the late 1950s onward showed relatively small changes in OHC year-to-year, relative to the warming trend, made it a very reliable climate change indicator.
Warm oceans also “supercharge” the weather, putting extra heat and moisture into the atmosphere that is making storms more severe, with heavier rain, more powerful winds and worse flooding.
Changing rainfall and evaporation patterns are also making salty ocean regions saltier and areas with lower salinity become fresher with major impacts for marine life and ocean currents as less dense, warm and fresh water stays near the surface, unable to transfer heat and carbon dioxide to deeper layers.
The scientists called for an immediate halt to the use of the fossil fuels that are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by decarbonizing the global economy and switching to renewable energy.
The Chinese-led report comes two days after the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that 2023 was the hottest year on record, beating the old record set in 2016.
The agency said heat waves across the world in the second half of the year pushed the average temperature up by almost a fifth of a degree above the 2016 level to 14.98 degrees Celsius, or 58.98 degrees Fahrenheit.
