Friday October 21, 2022
Washington Post —
The world’s oceans have been warming for generations, a trend that is accelerating and threatens to fuel more supercharged storms, devastate marine ecosystems and upend the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, according to a new scientific analysis.
Published this week in the journal Nature Reviews, it finds that the upper reaches of the oceans — roughly the top 2,000 meters, or just over a mile — have been heating up around the planet since at least the 1950s, with the most stark changes observed in the Atlantic and Southern oceans.
The authors of the review, who include scientists from China, France, the United States and Australia, write that data shows the heating has both accelerated over time and increasingly has reached deeper and deeper depths. That warming — which the scientists said probably is irreversible through 2100 — is poised to continue, and to create new hot spots around the globe, especially if humans fail to make significant and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.