The study, led by Prof. Dr. Lijing Cheng from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, involves a team of 54 scientists from 7 countries and examines how a warmer ocean impacts our lives on land and what it signifies for our future.
“The ocean serves as our planet’s sentinel for global warming, functioning as the primary reservoir for excess heat accumulating in Earth’s climate system due to human-induced emissions,” said Dr. Karina von Schuckmann, who warns that without decisive action to mitigate climate change and urgent adaptation measures, we face escalating disruptions, unprecedented environmental shifts, and increasing economic and human costs.
According to the study, heating in the ocean has continued in 2024 in response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, despite the transition from an El Niño to neutral conditions: this means that the global sea surface temperature is a new record for the instrumentation era, and the ocean heat content of global upper 2,000 m is the highest ever recorded by modern instruments, particularly in the Indian Ocean, Tropical Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Southern Ocean.
These record-high values of 2024 sea surface temperatures and Ocean heat content continue to indicate unabated trends of global heating. Over the past 12 months, 138 countries have recorded their hottest temperatures ever. Droughts, heat waves, floods, and wildfires have impacted Africa, Southern Asia, the Philippines, Brazil, Europe, the USA, Chile, and the Great Barrier Reef, as a few examples.
To read more about the study, visit: https://www.mercator-ocean.eu/en/news/ocean-heat-reached-new-records-2024/
