2024-03-19 17:04:21
by Paolo Virtuani
The peak of 21.2 degrees has no comparison with previous measurements and is 0.8 C above the thirty-year reference average 1982-2011
March 18, 2023 – March 18, 2024: for exactly one year (366 days to be exact, because February 29 of the leap year must also be counted) the average daily sea temperature has exceeded all previous records. In fact, on 18 March last year, with 21 degrees the average exceeded that of 2016, the year which had recorded the previous record. Since that date, the oceans between the latitudes of 60 North and 60 South, therefore excluding the polar seas, have constantly recorded surface temperatures never previously reached.
Last year
2023 recorded two peaks with temperatures of 21.1 C: between 1 and 5 April and between 13 and 31 August. The spring peak corresponds to the moment of maximum warming of the oceans in the southern hemisphere, where summer is ending. That at the end of August corresponds to the maximum warming in the northern hemisphere.
Il 2024
But this year we are already breaking all records. The peak of 21.2 degrees was reached earlier than the previous year: between February 28th and March 11th. Then there was a slight decrease until March 15th, probably due to the bad weather in the first half of the month in the Northern hemisphere, but in the last few days the trend, recorded daily by the Climatereanalizer site of the Climate Change Institute of the University of Maine, has again growing and could reach, or even exceed, the maximums between the end of March and the first days of April.
Average
The figure is even more impressive if it is compared with the 1982-2011 reference average, whose maximum peak corresponds to mid-March with 20.4 degrees. The difference of 0.8 degrees apparently seems small, but just one tenth of a degree more corresponds to an enormous amount of additional heat that is accumulated in the oceans. If thirty-year averages from earlier periods were taken as a reference, the difference would be greater than a whole degree.
Heat absorbed by the oceans
According to a recent study appearing in Nature, ocean warming between 2010 and 2020 almost doubled compared to the decade 1990-2000. Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst that appeared in 2020 indicates that the current warming of the North Atlantic Ocean is unparalleled in the last 2,900 years.
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March 19, 2024 (modified March 19, 2024 | 6:03 pm)
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