Ocean Warming Drives Climate Impacts

Every second last year, the Earth's oceans absorbed the energy equivalent of 12 Hiroshima-sized bombs. This is according to a report just released in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, compiled by 31 international institutions. So what's the significance of this?

When most of us think about the effects of global warming -- and read what's largely reported in popular media -- we think about terrestrial impacts: drought, wildfires, water shortages, crop failures, more severe weather events, etc. This is what we experience in our lives, not what occurs beneath the 70% of the Earth's surface covered by oceans. Rising sea levels are about as close as most reporting gets to what's occuring beneath the surface.

However, Earth's oceans act as the planet's main thermal sink, absorbing more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases. Oceans regulate global temperatures by absorbing and releasing heat and they drive the planet's water cycle. "A warming ocean leads to warmer, wetter air -- which leads to stronger storms," according to John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences in Minnesota. He compares this to fueling our weather with steroids. "We can expect our weather to become more extreme and unpredictable." This means more damage and deaths from future storm and flood events.

Warmer ocean waters accelerate the melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets contributing to sea level rise and acidification of ocean waters. These threaten the well-being of corals and shellfish. Warming waters are also compelling marine fish and mammal species to shift their distributions, with unknown ecological consequences.

Yet the Trump administration's overt disdain for and denial of climate science has slashed funding for a host of grants, programs, and agencies that investigate and make management recommendations to mitigate and adapt to climate impacts. A recent Trump executive order pulled the United States from membership in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in which nearly 200 nations have been assessing climate science since 1988. Who asked for any of this, except perhaps the fossil fuel industry and their allies?

Time is of the essence. Climate adaptation and consensus building to reduce greenhouse gas emissions require objective data analysis and public education -- both of which are increasingly threatened by federal policies, deception, and inaction.