The year 2019 was the second warmest year ever to be measured and the past five years have on average been the warmest years since the measurements began, reports the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
This applies to oceans last year the warmest ever since researchers started measuring the temperature in oceans.
According to the WMO, every decade since 1980 has been warmer than the last. This trend will continue, the WMO expects, because of the ever-increasing emission of greenhouse gases.
The average temperature on earth is now 1.1 degrees higher than the average in the period 1850-1900. The warmest year remains 2016. In that year, the natural phenomenon El Nino was particularly powerful.
“The year 2020 has started where 2019 has ended,” said Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the WMO. “With weather and climate-related events having a major impact. Australia had measured its hottest and driest year ever in 2019 and set the scene for huge forest fires devastating to people and property, wildlife, ecosystems and the environment,” said Taalas.
53 degrees warmer
Most of global warming is disappearing into the oceans. More than ninety percent is stored in seawater, according to data from the American institute NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
According to Femke de Jong of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), this is because water can absorb so much heat. “The top two meters of the ocean can store as much heat as the entire atmosphere.”
De Jong has calculated how much warmer it would have been on earth if the heat had not entered the oceans. “If the same heat had entered the atmosphere, it would have been 53 degrees hotter in the air now. So the oceans literally keep our heads cool.”
In seawater, heating leads to much less temperature rise; average to 0.05 degree. “If you were to use it all over the ocean, it would be five hundredths of a degree.” It seems like a minimal warming, but it is not, says De Jong. “That’s because of the enormous volume of the ocean. The ocean is on average about 4.5 kilometers deep. And has about a thousand times more heat storage than the entire atmosphere combined.”
Smaller fish
Even such a small rise in temperature in the water has major consequences, says De Jong. “It has many consequences. For marine life, such as the corals that fade, for acidification, and more and more heat waves occur in the seas, which also have consequences for ocean life.”
In addition, water expands as it gets warmer, and as a result, sea levels rise. There are also consequences for fish. “There are studies that show that fish adapt to the higher temperature. And especially that they are getting smaller and smaller, and the fishing industry is noticing that.”
2019 was also a warm year in the Netherlands. Earlier KNMI announced that only the months of November and May were colder than normal, the rest of the year it was warmer:
–
