Prince.Skeletor
Don’t Be Like He-Man
Oceans serve as a good indicator of the real impact of climate change. Covering almost three quarters of Earth's surface, they absorb the vast majority of the world's heat.
(CNN)The world's oceans are now heating at the same rate as if five Hiroshima atomic bombs were dropped into the water every second, scientists have said.
A new study released on Monday showed that 2019 was yet another year of record-setting ocean warming, with water temperatures reaching the highest temperature ever recorded.
An international team of 14 scientists examined data going back to the 1950s, looking at temperatures from the ocean surface to 2,000 meters deep. The study, which was published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, also showed that the oceans are warming at an increasing speed.
While the past decade has been the warmest on record for global ocean temperatures, the hottest five years ever recorded all came in the last five.
"The upward trend is relentless, and so we can say with confidence that most of the warming is man-made climate change," said Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The study shows that while the oceans warmed steadily between 1955 and 1986, warming has accelerated rapidly in the last few decades. Between 1987-2019, ocean warming was 450% greater than during the earlier time period.
Lijing Cheng, the paper's lead author and an associate professor at the International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the ocean temperature was 0.075 degrees Celsius above the 1981-2010 average in 2019.
"There are no reasonable alternatives aside from the human emissions of heat trapping gases to explain this heating," Cheng said, adding that to reach this temperature, the ocean would have taken in 228,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 -- or 228 sextillion -- joules of heat.
"The Hiroshima atom-bomb exploded with an energy of about 63,000,000,000,000 Joules," Cheng said. "I did a calculation ... the amount of heat we have put in the world's oceans in the past 25 years equals to 3.6 billion Hiroshima atom-bomb explosions," he added.
That's equivalent to dropping roughly four Hiroshima bombs into the oceans every second over the past quarter of a century. But because the warming is speeding up, the rate at which we are dropping these imaginary bombs is getting faster than ever.
"We are now at five to six Hiroshima bombs of heat each second," said John Abraham, one of the authors of the study and a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
Oceans are warming at the same rate as if five Hiroshima bombs were dropped in every second - CNN
(CNN)The world's oceans are now heating at the same rate as if five Hiroshima atomic bombs were dropped into the water every second, scientists have said.
A new study released on Monday showed that 2019 was yet another year of record-setting ocean warming, with water temperatures reaching the highest temperature ever recorded.
An international team of 14 scientists examined data going back to the 1950s, looking at temperatures from the ocean surface to 2,000 meters deep. The study, which was published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, also showed that the oceans are warming at an increasing speed.
While the past decade has been the warmest on record for global ocean temperatures, the hottest five years ever recorded all came in the last five.
"The upward trend is relentless, and so we can say with confidence that most of the warming is man-made climate change," said Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The study shows that while the oceans warmed steadily between 1955 and 1986, warming has accelerated rapidly in the last few decades. Between 1987-2019, ocean warming was 450% greater than during the earlier time period.
Lijing Cheng, the paper's lead author and an associate professor at the International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the ocean temperature was 0.075 degrees Celsius above the 1981-2010 average in 2019.
"There are no reasonable alternatives aside from the human emissions of heat trapping gases to explain this heating," Cheng said, adding that to reach this temperature, the ocean would have taken in 228,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 -- or 228 sextillion -- joules of heat.
"The Hiroshima atom-bomb exploded with an energy of about 63,000,000,000,000 Joules," Cheng said. "I did a calculation ... the amount of heat we have put in the world's oceans in the past 25 years equals to 3.6 billion Hiroshima atom-bomb explosions," he added.
That's equivalent to dropping roughly four Hiroshima bombs into the oceans every second over the past quarter of a century. But because the warming is speeding up, the rate at which we are dropping these imaginary bombs is getting faster than ever.
"We are now at five to six Hiroshima bombs of heat each second," said John Abraham, one of the authors of the study and a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
Oceans are warming at the same rate as if five Hiroshima bombs were dropped in every second - CNN
