The Ocean Is Looking More Menacing
Newsletter Opinion Writer There are a lot of unsettling signals coming from the worlds oceans right now. Even for those of us who watch things like temperature anomalies and extreme weather events as likely portents of the climate to come, the off-the-charts rise of global sea surface temperature this spring has been eye-popping. As is much of the language recently used to describe it: . Perhaps most simply: In mid-March, measures of global sea-surface temperature plotted against recent years took a sharp turn away from the pack. By April 1, it had hit a record high. Then, in line with historical seasonal patterns, it began to slightly decline only to reverse course in the middle of the month, heating up to about three quarters of a degree above the 1982-2011 mean. That represented what Robert Rohde, the lead scientist of the Berkeley Earth institute, as the largest global ocean temperature anomaly on record. Three-quarters of a degree might not sound like much, and the size of the anomaly has since shrunk, to a temperature level only . But scientists talk about global temperature rise using very small numbers sometimes describing the difference between 1 degree Celsius of warming and 2 as an almost civilization-scale chasm and often find themselves gobsmacked when local surface temperature records are broken by even one full degree. Because the oceans are so large, it takes a lot more to heat them which makes any extremes even harder to produce, and therefore more startling. The recent temperature spikes are partly explained by the apparent shift from a La Nina cycle in the Pacific, which suppresses global temperatures, to an El Nino cycle, which elevates them. But this April, huge areas of the worlds oceans were . In places off the Pacific coast of South America it was as much as five degrees higher. Sea-surface temperatures off the Atlantic coast of North America were . What do you call the arrival of events that have been predicted but, when predicted, were described as distressing or even terrifying? The question now governs an awful lot of our experience of the warming world, which confronts us routinely with events we may have known to expect but for which nevertheless we find ourselves often woefully underprepared politically, socially, emotionally, and with inadequate built and human infrastructure. And then there are the genuine surprises, since even in a world of loudly broadcast climate science, regular U.N. warnings, and even naked alarmism, there are still, pretty frequently, truly unexpected extremes. The 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, for instance, was judged at the time to be a once-in-a-millennium event, yet it was followed less than two years later by a heat event in May that was . Another to the east. But some news from ocean science may prove more surprising still perhaps genuinely paradigm-shifting. In a published in March, researchers that under a high-emissions scenario, rapid melting of Antarctic ice could slow deepwater formation in the Southern Ocean by more than 40 percent by 2050, disrupting the conveyor belt that regulates and stabilizes not just the temperature of the oceans but much of the worlds weather systems. And after 2050? This key part of the circulation of the Southern Ocean looks headed towards collapse this century, study coordinator Matthew England Yale Environment 360. And once collapsed, it would most likely stay collapsed until Antarctic melting stopped. At current projections that could be centuries away. Then, last week, some of the same researchers that the process was already unfolding in fact, that the Southern Ocean overturning circulation had already slowed by as much as 30 percent since the 1990s. The model projections of rapid change in the deep ocean circulation in response to melting of Antarctic ice might, if anything, have been conservative, Steve Rintoul, a co-author on the new paper and one of the researchers whod published the previous paper back in March. Changes have already happened in the ocean that were not projected to happen until a few decades from now. The oceans have lately produced a number of other curiosities to chew over, as well: of Antarctic sea ice, with the mind boggling fast reduction scientists have gobsmacking also potentially a regime shift in the oceans; some in the El Nino-La Nina cycle, suggesting that warming may be making La Ninas more frequent and thereby scrambling some expectations for future extreme weather; and about the role large icebergs in the warming patterns of the worlds water. Some of this research (on the circulation patterns of the Southern Ocean) is relatively novel. Some of it (about El Nino patterns and icebergs) is considerably more tentative or speculative. And the findings havent yet been stitched into a comprehensive picture of the changing dynamics of the worlds oceans, which means we dont yet know exactly how precisely to revise our understanding of the near future as a result. But taken altogether, they do suggest that those ocean dynamics are changing possibly pretty quickly. Reflecting on the anomalies and whats to come, later this year, Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center recently , Expect chaos. On some level, this shouldnt surprise us. Just under 90 percent of the additional heat caused by global warming goes into the ocean, according to , which also found that the planet accumulated nearly as much additional heat in the past 15 years as it did over the previous 45. (Perhaps this should not be too surprising, given that almost a third of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in the history of humanity were expelled into the atmosphere in those 15 years.) Its for this reason that the ocean is often described as a kind of release valve for warming or sometimes a temperature sink sparing our lands of some considerable additional heat. But what this means for oceans is that they are dealing with about 15 times as much impact and disruption from heat as those of us walking the earth and breathing air. And that, probably, we should be spending a lot more time looking there, in the worlds water, for the clearest signs of planetary distress. Although mans record as a steward of the natural resources of the earth has been a discouraging one, there has long been a certain comfort in the belief that the sea, at least, was inviolate, beyond mans ability to change and to despoil, Rachel Carson wrote in a preface to The Sea Around Us, which won her a National Book Award and spent 86 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, well before the publication of Silent Spring This belief, unfortunately, has proved to be naive. A few weeks ago, I about how much farther wildfire smoke travels than most Americans appreciate, with 87 percent of its impact felt outside the county of the fire and 60 percent outside the state. So far this year, it appears as if wildfire pollution in East Coast cities like New York and Boston than in West Coast cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles. (Though Denvers air pollution .) State Farm, Californias largest provider of homeowner insurance, that it would stop selling new policies in the state, out of concern over climate risks and building costs, calling to mind what has been a climate doom loop of rising insurance costs, deteriorating property values, and shrinking local tax bases. China a national emissions peak this year, well ahead of expectations and schedule. In Europe, wholesale electricity prices from renewables for stretches this spring. Here, the clean-energy production pipeline is , but actual installations . As negotiations over a global plastics treaty , we are reminded that, globally, . The National Eating Disorder Association had announced it would be replacing the human associates on its help line with A.I.-powered chatbots but after it was revealed that the chatbots were pushing those calling in distress toward unhealthier habits. For three decades, there has been a gradual rise in the number of people under 50 being diagnosed with cancer