Community | August 21, 2009 | 21 comments

Ocean temperatures hit all-time high, Arctic 10 degrees above average

source: http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/ocean-temperatures-hit-all-time-high/

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WakeUpPeople
Steve Kramer spent an hour and a half swimming in the ocean Sunday — in Maine. The water temperature was 72 degrees — more like Ocean City, Md., this time of year. And Ocean City's water temp hit 88 degrees this week, toasty even by Miami Beach standards.

Kramer, 26, who lives in the seaside town of Scarborough, said it was the first time he's ever swam so long in Maine's coastal waters. "Usually, you're in five minutes and you're out," he said.

It's not just the ocean off the Northeast coast that is super-warm this summer. July was the hottest the world's oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping.

The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records. That was 1.1 degree higher than the 20th century average, and beat the previous high set in 1998 by a couple hundredths of a degree. The coolest recorded ocean temperature was 59.3 degrees in December 1909.

Meteorologists said there's a combination of forces at work this year: A natural El Nino system just getting started on top of worsening man-made global warming, and a dash of random weather variations. The resulting ocean heat is already harming threatened coral reefs. It could also hasten the melting of Arctic sea ice and help hurricanes strengthen.

The Gulf of Mexico, where warm water fuels hurricanes, has temperatures dancing around 90. Most of the water in the Northern Hemisphere has been considerably warmer than normal. The Mediterranean is about three degrees warmer than normal. Higher temperatures rule in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The heat is most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average. The tongues of warm water could help melt sea ice from below and even cause thawing of ice sheets on Greenland, said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado.

Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land, because water takes longer to heat up and does not cool off as easily as land.

"This warm water we're seeing doesn't just disappear next year; it'll be around for a long time," said climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. It takes five times more energy to warm water than land.

The warmer water "affects weather on the land," Weaver said. "This is another yet really important indicator of the change that's occurring."
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21 comments // Ocean temperatures hit all-time high, Arctic 10 degrees above average

  • WakeUpPeople
    • 0
      WakeUpPeople  

    • @plusaf

      The surface temperature site is not saying that the readings are wrong. It is saying that because of their locations there may or may not be a margin of error on the readings. This also has absolutely nothing to do with ocean temperature readings.

    • 2 years ago
  • WakeUpPeople
    • 0
      WakeUpPeople  
    • Image
    • WakeUpPeople:

      I understand the cherry picking problem. I've spent hours on current trying to explain the concept of "the big picture". When looking at climate trends, you can't say temps were down for a few years so global warming is over. Climatologists typically use 30 year blocks to determine if Earth is in a state of warming or cooling in order to offset annual fluctuations.

      I'm sure that you are a very good engineer Plusaf. No offense though, I'm going to listen to the overwhelming consensus of climatologists on this one. It's the same reason that I wouldn't feel comfortable asking a climatologist to do your job.

      What really gets me though is that we have the technologies to produce clean efficient renewable energy. Typically, in a free market, if someone produces a better product, it gets attention and ultimately becomes the new standard. Well, we have MANY new technologies that are insanely more efficient and cleaner, but they are suppressed by the wealthiest companies that continue to damage the planet (mountain top removal, oil drilling/spills/waste, atmosphere pollution, etc). We all just have to accept that these old technologies WILL die because there is a limited supply. Since we have the new technology, why should we wait? What I really don't understand is why these energy companies aren't investing in clean energy technology instead of paying lobbyists, politicians, and PR firms to keep the status quo. That money could be going to the future relevancy of their own company instead of driving them faster to their own dead end.

    • 2 years ago
  • WakeUpPeople
  • jubal
  • kennymotown
    • 0
      kennymotown  

    • jeffrey_reser you have a good point, the best idea I heard lately was to paint all the roofs white in the world and see what kind of effect that would have. Maybe we can paint the asphalt white and use black stripes as well.

    • 2 years ago
  • mikejohns15
    • 0
      mikejohns15  
    • kennymotown:

      It's just the simple things that everyone takes for granted in the world that really screws us over. Running water, electricity, whatever food we want in stock year round. And now, a new thing to add to the list: Paved roads! White roads, however, I think that mught be a little too bright when you're trying to drive down the interstate!

    • 2 years ago
  • jeffrey_reser
    • 0
      jeffrey_reser  

    • To what extent is warming caused by asphalt parking lots? Most of these are oversized and only fully used during the holiday season.

      Were the trees or farmable topsoil still there, to what extent would global warming be reduced?

      Can someone please tabulate how much land area is occupied by parking lots on this planet and then mathematically calculate their warming effect?

      THIS IS SERIOUS!

      Okay, now add the square meters of asphalt roadway in existence and its affect relative to the same area in natural state.

      There should be grant money available for universities to study this more! A thermal unit average per square meter per year figure can then be approximated for each region. From there, action steps could ensue.

      + It appears that there is already a good deal of data collected on this including that on Urban Heat Islands ( UHI ), as I am learning. The info does seem to indicate a substantial difference in heating caused by artificial surface materials, which may even be greater at night.

      Jeffrey Reser

    • 2 years ago
  • maof4brats
  • neonbunny
    • 0
      neonbunny  

    • Yes, yes, we know. Ocean levels on the rise. Will harm many dolphins. Polar bears will be angered. Diseases will run rampant. Death imminent. Extinction probable. Head for mars while you still can!

    • 2 years ago
  • kennymotown
  • artemis6
    • 0
      artemis6  

    • Thanks sergantonio ! This is very bad for the coral reefs too . It impacts the entire food chain . Us too , though we will not notice to for a year or two .

    • 2 years ago
  • maof4brats
    • 0
      maof4brats [removed]  

    • I hope eveybody knows how to swim, I am not joking! We have multimillion dollar homes on the coast of Cali. and off and on we have storm surges that distroy them,and the next week these stupid people rebuild on the same place and insurance takes care of it. DON'T THEY UNDERSTAND THEY SHOULDN'T BUILD THERE! The coast is getting higher and higher. I have no sympathy for these rich SOBs that just want their coast. Well when there is no coast left OH WELL!!By By richy rich.Im lucky I am at 3000 ft. Hey maybe I'll have beach front property.

    • 2 years ago
  • samthesixth
    • 0
      samthesixth  

    • Oh sure. The famine in Ethiopia is caused by global warming and big country pollution. It as if there wasn't warring factions in Ethiopia in the 90s that were destroying crops to foster starvation as a method of warfare!

    • 2 years ago
  • sergantonio
    • 0
      sergantonio  

    • This is not surprising based on a study done by a scientist in the late 90's looking at the cause of the massive drought that devastated the tribal regions in Ethiopia for 10 years he found that high levels of particulate pollution traced all the way back to pollution from north America and china that cooled the atmosphere stopping the monsoon season but now as particulate pollution is dropping the unexplained temp difference between now and 12 million years ago the last time CO2 levels where this high had Hotter temps so now we are seeing less acid rain but a continued increase in C02 production. The particulate pollution kept the earth cooler canceling or at least slowing the obvious effects of the high C02 green house effects that we are now experiencing in a super charged manner. Nova did a very good documentory on this
      http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

    • 2 years ago
  • jubal
  • stephenthomson
  • WakeUpPeople
    • 0
      WakeUpPeople  
    • stephenthomson:

      I have no regrets using my electricity whenever I please because I pay for 100% clean renewable energy from my provider. If we all start paying the extra couple of bucks each month for clean energy, the old dirty companies will DIE, and our collective costs will go down.

    • 2 years ago
  • stephenthomson
    • 0
      stephenthomson  

    • I'm convinced there needs to be an initiative to get off the computer, turn off the TV, and other "curfew"-like activities that can be rewarded somehow. I've done my share of complaining but i'm still just one more asshole who's plugged in all day long. If the whole world lived like us in the developed world, the ice would have disappeared for good long ago.

    • 2 years ago
  • WakeUpPeople
    • 0
      WakeUpPeople  

    • I don't know what more to say or do than what I have already done in other posts. 97% of climatologists agree that human behavior is having an impact on our climate change. You won't find a consensus like that in any scientific field on any other question. Of ALL scientists from every group, 82% agree with the climatologists. If only our political will could match the ingenuity of our clean energy technologies that are just waiting to be implemented. It's enough to make me sick.

    • 2 years ago
  • mikejohns15
    • 0
      mikejohns15  
    • WakeUpPeople:

      Well, we don't need a complete overhaul of our society, we just need to be smarter with what we do, and we need to realize that we are not the masters of the Earth, but the mere servants of Mother Nature. We can still be "plugged in," but we need to be more efficient and more conservative energy-wise.

    • 2 years ago
  • jubal
    • 0
      jubal  
    • WakeUpPeople:

      Lets hope that all the effort won't result in a New Global Governance based on the climate change crisis. You know those politicians, they are always up to no good trying to profit from a crisis.

    • 2 years ago
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