Oceans heat up as if 3.6 billion bombs were dropped on them

Last year's ocean temperature averaged 0.075 degrees Celsius above the estimated average between 1981 and 2010, the analysis showed. While this may seem like an extremely small increase, it is actually a huge amount of heat spread in the world's oceans.

The amount of heat we spread into the oceans is equal to the heat that would be generated by 3.6 billion atom bombs thrown at Hiroshima”, said Cheng Lijing, lead author and professor associated at the Institute of Atmospheric Fisica at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

He added that in explaining such warming, there was no other reasonable alternative than human emissions.

Cheng and colleagues compared data collected from 1987 to 2019 with data from 1955 to 1986. They found that in the past six decades, warming was about 450 percent higher than in the previous period, indicating a sharp increase in the scale of global climate change. It changes.

In other words, the heating period from 1987 to 2019 was four and a half times faster than that from 1955 to 1986.

The main question is to understand how quickly things change, said John Abraham, a coauthor and professor at St. Thomas in Minnesota.

And this is terrible news ... and only the tip of the iceberg compared to what will come,” he said.

Ocean warming can cause heat waves that can lead to major losses in marine life and cause more frequent and destructive hurricanes, as well as more extreme weather.

Researchers say that people can still work on changes when it comes to their impact in climate, but they warn you that the oceans will take much longer to rehabilitate and react than the atmosphere and earth will require.

Warm oceans affect melting ice, causing sea level to rise. The largest sea level growth since 1900 has been measured over the past decade. Scientists expect the sea level to rise by about three feet [1 m] to the end of the century, enough to move some 150 million people worldwide.