ocean – Page 3 – Desdemona Despair

Near-surface temperature differences relative to the 1981–2010 average for 2022 to September. The map shows the median anomaly calculated from six data sets: HadCRUT5, ERA5, JRA-55, GISTEMP, NOAAGlobalTemp, and Berkeley Earth. Graphic: WMO

November 7, 2022

State of the Global Climate 2022: Sea level rise accelerates, European glacier melt shatters records, extreme weather causes devastation – “What climate scientists have warned about for decades is upon us”

By Seth Borenstein 6 November 2022 SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) – Earth’s warming weather and rising seas are getting worse and doing so faster than before, the World Meteorological Organization warned Sunday in a somber note as world leaders started gathering for international climate negotiations. [Eight warmest years on record witness upsurge in climate change impacts –Des] […]

Annual temperatures for Alaska, 1900-2018. Alaska’s ten coldest years on record (blue dots) all occurred before 1980. Meanwhile, nine of its ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1980. Data: NASA GISS and UAF / Brian Brettschneider. Graphic: Rick Thoman / Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy

October 21, 2022

Warming waters causing mass die-off of Alaska snow crabs – Total numbers down 84 percent since 2018 – “The cold-water habitat they need was virtually absent, which suggests that temperature is really the key culprit in this population decline”

20 October 2022 (CBS News) – Climate change is a prime suspect in a mass die-off of Alaska’s snow crabs, experts say, after the state took the unprecedented step of canceling their harvest this season to save the species. According to an annual survey of the Bering Sea floor carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, […]

The location of climate tipping elements in the cryosphere (blue), biosphere (green) and ocean/atmosphere (orange), and global warming levels their tipping points will likely be triggered at 1.5°C. Researchers see signs of destabilisation already in parts of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in permafrost regions, the Amazon rainforest, and potentially the Atlantic overturning circulation as well. Graphic: Earth Commission / Globaïa

September 25, 2022

World at risk of passing multiple climate tipping points above 1.5°C global warming

8 September 2022 (Stockholm Resilience Centre) – Multiple climate tipping points could be triggered if global temperature rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a major new analysis published in the journal Science. Even at current levels of global heating the world is already at risk of passing five dangerous climate tipping points, and risks […]

Sea surface temperature anomaly for the Atlantic Ocean, 5 August 2022. Graphic: Scott Duncan

September 18, 2022

An intense marine heat wave is setting ocean temperature records in the North Atlantic – “Every marine heat wave is going to be warmer than the last because of rises in greenhouse gases”

By Denise Chow 7 September 2022 (NBC News) – It’s not just land seeing record heat waves. Ocean waters in the Northern Hemisphere have been unusually warm in recent weeks, with parts of the North Atlantic and northern Pacific undergoing particularly intense marine heat waves. Sea surface temperatures in these regions hit record levels this […]

Changes in global average sea level (background map) and local sea level (dots) between 1993 and 2021. In the global ocean, sea level has risen nearly everywhere (blue). Coastal areas where sea level has fallen (brown) are places where the land is rising as it rebounds from being compressed by ice sheets and glaciers during the last ice age. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from University of Hawaii Sea Level Center. Graphic: NOAA

September 4, 2022

American Meteorological Society report: Record-high greenhouse gases and sea levels in 2021 – Ocean heat content highest on record

31 August 2022 (NOAA) – Greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea levels and ocean heat content reached record highs in 2021, according to the 32nd annual State of the Climate report. The international annual review of the world’s climate, led by scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and published by the Bulletin of the […]

(a) Annual mean temperature anomalies in the Arctic (66.5∘–90∘N) (dark colours) and globally (light colours) during 1950–2021 derived from the various observational datasets. Temperature anomalies have been calculated relative to the standard 30-year period of 1981–2010. Shown are also the linear temperature trends for 1979–2021. (b) Annual mean temperature trends for the period 1979–2021, derived from the average of the observational datasets. Areas without a statistically significant change are masked out. (c) Local amplification ratio calculated for the period 1979–2021, derived from the average of the observational datasets. The dashed line in (b) and (c) depicts the Arctic Circle (66.5∘N latitude). Graphic: Rantanen, et al., 2022 / Communications Earth and Environment

August 14, 2022

Arctic warming four times faster than rest of Earth – “Something is happening in the Arctic, and it will affect us all”

PARIS, 11 August 2022 (AFP) – The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet over the last 40 years, according to research published Thursday that suggests climate models are underestimating the rate of polar heating. The United Nations’ climate science panel said in a special report in 2019 that […]

Aerial view of a salmon farm operated by New Zealand King Salmon. Photo: New Zealand King Salmon

May 29, 2022

Major New Zealand salmon producer shuts farms as warming waters cause mass die-offs – “We thought we had more time”

By Tess McClure 26 May 2022 AUCKLAND (The Guardian) – New Zealand’s biggest king salmon farmer says it is shutting some of its farms after warming seas prompted mass die-offs of fish, warning that it is a “canary in the coalmine” for climate change. New Zealand is the world’s largest producer of king, or “chinook” […]

An octopus is pictured “stilt-walking” with a variety of collected trash. A new study crowdsourced hundreds of images, including this one, that observed octopuses using human garbage for a variety of tasks. Photo: Serge Abourjeily

April 3, 2022

Octopuses are using human garbage as shelter, camouflage and more, study finds – “It’s becoming so common that they’re using these items to protect themselves with instead of their natural shelters, such as seashells, which are becoming scarce in the ocean”

9 March 2022 (CBC Radio) – A new study suggests it’s becoming increasingly common for octopuses to use bottles, cans and other human trash to shelter themselves, camouflage their dens and even house their young. “We believe this is because of the high abundance of these artificial items — you know, the litter item — […]

An ocean heatwave is shown in this map off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, 30 December 2021. Graphic: OceanCurrent

January 6, 2022

Extreme marine heatwave as waters off Sydney set to break temperature records – “It appears now to be reaching record levels and will likely be the hottest January on record”

By Graham Readfearn 4 January 2022 (The Guardian) – Waters off Sydney are undergoing an extreme marine heatwave with temperatures likely at their highest levels on record for January. Satellite data is showing the ocean surface off the coast of Sydney at 3C above normal, with swimmers and surfers reporting conditions that feel more like […]

Dead oysters in a commercial oyster bed that were killed by the record heat wave in British Columbia in 2021. When Judy Hicks headed to the beach on 2 July 2021, she discovered that many of her oysters had cracked-open shells, indicating they’d died during the heat wave. From 25 June 2021 to 1 July 2021, during B.C.’s unprecedented “heat dome” that caused hundreds of human fatalities, record-breaking temperatures are estimated to have killed more than one billion sea animals. Photo: Judy Hicks / The Tyee

August 22, 2021

BC’s shellfish farmers struggle after record heatwave decimates oysters – “I have been in this industry for 36 years, and I have never seen a mortality rate like this”

By Vaishnavi Dandekar 5 Aug 2021 (The Tyee) – Judy Hicks, a commercial shellfish grower in Okeover Inlet, B.C., started her day early on July 2. Weather forecasts had predicted that temperatures would reach the mid-20s that day — after hitting the mid-to-high 30s earlier that week — and Hicks wanted to avoid the heat. […]