A recent research has found that the world’s oceans were the warmest on record in 2022 — the fourth year in a row.
The ocean saw record high temperatures once again in 2022, according to new research published on Tuesday.
“The inexorable climb in ocean temperatures is the inevitable outcome of Earth’s energy imbalance, primarily associated with increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases,” said the paper, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
“The global long-term warming trend is so steady and robust that annual records continue to be set with each new year,” it added.
Climate change caused by human activity is the driving force behind many of these dangerous shifts, which threaten to destroy a wide variety of natural systems in and out of the world’s oceans. These changes are, in turn, an indicator of the stark upward trend of global warming.
One of the best signs of the climate crisis is the heat in the oceans. Although there is a general rising trend in atmospheric temperatures, they do vary from year to year. According to studies by the EU, last year was the fifth-warmest year on record for global surface air temperatures. On the other hand, ocean heat has been continuously increasing each year as oceans absorb over 90% of the extra warming brought on by the unrelenting burning of fossil fuels and other global warming activities.
This research could help explain why some of last year’s climate disasters, like Category 4 Hurricane Ian and devastating flooding in Pakistan, were so strong, as the ocean has literally been fueling these disasters.
The last eight years were also the warmest on record, according to research released by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Monday.
