Fishing boats amidst Arctic “sea smoke” near Qingdao, China on January 7. A result of frigid air passing over relatively warm water; the phenomenon is rare, even in the Arctic. [IMAGE: WANG SHAOQING]

Even with the small COVID-19-related dip in global carbon emissions due to limitations on travel and other activities, global ocean temperatures continued to break records in 2020. A new study by 20 scientists from 13 institutes around the world reported the highest ocean temperatures since 1955, from surface level to a depth of 2,000 meters.

The study was published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on January 13. It concluded with a plea to policymakers and others to consider the lasting damage that can be caused by warming oceans, and to redouble efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Using a method developed by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the researchers calculated the temperature and salinity of the oceans down to a depth of 2,000 meters, with data taken of all available observations from various measurement devices in the World Ocean Database.

They found that, in 2020, the upper 2,000 meters of the world’s oceans absorbed 20 more zettajoules than in 2019. That amount of heat could boil 1.3 billion kettles, each containing 1.5 liters of water.

This work was supported by the National Key Research & Development Program of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Key Deployment Project of Centre for Ocean Mega-Research of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Source: Institute of Atmospheric Physics,

Chinese Academy of Sciences