Heating Waters Force Change in Industries That Depend on the Ocean
climate change is reaching its limit. For six of the past seven years, the tropical Pacific Ocean has been close to or cooler than normal and has been absorbing excess heat from the atmosphere, according to Michael McPhaden, senior scientist at the NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. Now with a strong El Niño pattern underway in the Pacific, that excess heat is being released to the atmosphere where it is affecting ocean circulation patterns and contributing to the spate of marine heat waves in different parts of the globe, McPhaden said.
“There’s a host of bad things that happen to weather systems, the climate system and the ecosystems and fisheries when you have so many and such strong marine heat waves," McPhaden said. There are other possible explanations in addition to climate change and the El Niño/La Niña cycle. New pollution rules have cut airborne sulfur aerosol particles released by commercial ships over parts of the ocean, clearing the air and allowing more sunlight to reach the ocean surface.
That in turn might be heating the water along some shipping routes, although the amount is in dispute, according to several recent estimates. In January 2022, an underwater volcano near Tonga blasted 50 million tons of water vapor into the stratosphere. Some researchers believe that vapor might be acting as a planet-warming greenhouse gas and nudging up ocean temperatures.
Both theories are still under investigation, and their overall impact is up for debate. Sea ice that wraps Antarctica in a protective blanket has shrunk by a Greenland-sized chunk during the winter season, when it should be expanding. The continuing loss of sea ice is harming vital shrimp-like krill that forms the base of the
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