CLIMATE CHANGING, OCEANS BOILING

Climate change is slowly but steadily cooking the world’s oceans

Gwynn Guilford, February 4, 2014 (Quartz)

“…[The ocean takes up more than 70% of the planet’s surface and] absorbs a lot of energy…Roughly speaking, from about 1980 to 2000, the ocean gained around 50 zettajoules (ZJ, or 1021 joules) of heat. But from 2000 to 2013, it added another 150 ZJs of heat…Over the last half-dozen or so decades, the ocean’s been storing the heat energy equivalent of about two Hiroshima bombs per second. Worryingly, that rate’s picking up, with around four bombs per second stored in the last 16 years…In 2013, however, the ocean gained the heat equivalent to about 12 bombs per second…That’s troublesome, considering that warmer waters are thought to make hurricanes and typhoons more severe…Warmer waters also cause global sea levels to rise, threatening property values and exacerbating flooding…Deep-ocean temperatures are among the more consistent indicators of how our climate is changing…” click here for more

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