Record north atlantic sea temperature.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Expanding a discussion from the Spring Weather watch thread, we need to give this the attention it deserves.

The north Atlantic is running at record breaking temperatures, far exceeding anything that has been measured before. Why does this matter? The Atlantic is a powerhouse of our weather in the UK. It helps create our climate, transporting heat across us. It is also where many of our wind storms are born.

Of course the Atlantic is also where hurricanes gain their energy from. Warm sea temperatures provide the very fuel that keeps them going and determines how strong they become.

It seems that this is unlikely to be down to El Nino. El Nino warming in the Pacific ocean. El Nino years tend to be low hurricane years though. So perhaps the two factors will balance out the increased hurricane risk.

We have to be deeply concerned about what this will do to Greenland ice.

One factor that might be causing this, might be the record low levels of saharan dust, which is probably down to climate change.

No doubt the press will be picking up on this. If they don't then they are missing out critical climate news that will affect us all.

Checking in, I've no idea what this is but I'm interested/concerned to find out.

Me too, it's fascinating, if rather worrying.

https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1667571728984461312

A came across this on twitter about it

I'll come back to the thread tomorrow. The weather got rather lively in places today!

I dont really understand the impact of this. Other than 'it doesnt sound good'

I think that's something to be aware of. We probably can't really know the impact at this point. We can make some good guesses, but these are unchartered waters (pun half intended).

This is also not good

I hadn't seen that Meditrina. It looks very stark when plotted like that.

This has happened so hard and fast

It does feel shocking. I guess we can't know fully yet whether this is it now, or whether like last years +40c temperature it is a new extreme that will likely become more frequent.

Thank you OYBBK really interesting and worrying.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2378026-north-atlantic-ocean-has-reached-record-high-surface-temperatures/

oops. Pressed post by accident.

The above link was to a short explainer article.

This link is to the source of the chart that is being shared here and elsewhere, so that you can explore it further. https://www.climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

I should add, it's not quite the same chart, in that it shows actual temperature, rather than the anomaly. Anomaly charts show the difference between the average and the actual temperature.

Jeez. That is disastrous.

Take a look at the twitter thread I posted above. The professor who's account it is, is discussing this a lot and had included a link to a YouTube discussion about it. If you read the conversations he's having with people reply to him, there's lots of tidbits of information about potential causes and what it might mean for the world.

One thing pointed out is that it only takes a minute rise in sea temperature for coral to die, with obvious knock on effect to the aquatic eco system.

You don't need a twitter account to read (just say yes then cancel when/if it asks you to login).

Honestly I'm glad the press haven't gotten ahold of this because they would likely print sensationalist headlines that would not be helpful at all, just scare people. As it is, scientists really don't know as yet what this means in the short term, because we're in new territory. Yes it looks worrying but we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves.

The ocean temperature anomaly map is released daily here, so you can see how the El Nino is progressing and also see the warmth of the Atlantic in relation to the average temperature:

https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/product/5km/index_5km_ssta.php

And as a 30 day animation:

https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/data/5km/v3.1/current/animation/gif/ssta_animation_30day_45ns.gif

Plenty of links for you to play around with to zoom in or do longer animations.

Could it be slowing down the currents... in particular the conveyer belt.
The cold water I think is more nutrient rich, so if there is a increase in warm water, then less nutrient rich water? How will that affect sea life?

In terms of weather in the UK, could it mean we get more storms, more heat and humidity? In the US it is getting to be hurricane season, so we may start seeing if over there if the storms are more intense than usual.

Video about currents, which may be useful for seeing how water moves within the Atlantic and elsewhere.

The staggering thing is that we’ve only learned that there even ARE ocean currents, and how they work, relatively recently (last 100 years or so) and all the while we’ve been pumping out CO2 and methane with hardly a clue how that would affect countless natural complex systems. It’s like the Magician’s Nephew or something

Every time I see a graph like that I hope people will understand it and translate that into action. I really do.

Re the 'conveyor belt' - the red currant you see crossing the Atlantic and passing by Ireland and Scotland and then returning as a blue currant to the Gulf of Mexico is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) known as the Gulf Stream. This supplies warm water, which keeps the UK milder than it would otherwise be. As it reaches the Arctic it cools, the denser water sinks, and you can see it circulating back southwards, where the cycle repeats.

If that fails - and some years ago I recall discussions about that happening if climate warms too much, then our climate would become colder, particularly in Scotland. This would happen because melting ice in the polar region (which isn't saline, unlike the surrounding ocean) would result in dilution of the North Atlantic's salinity, thus reducing its density. The AMOC circulation depends on the density - cold water sinking at the Northern end - in order to keep going round its cycle.

There's a good video on this on YT - Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist and gives her view on a Gulf Stream collapse (or not, in her thinking). Worth listening to. Clearly this is a very complex issue and it's impossible to know what will happen in reality.

Oh and this site is just great to watch wind/water currents and circulation!

https://earth.nullschool.net/

More news of concern

‘Unheard of’ marine heatwave off UK and Irish coasts poses serious threat | Marine life | The Guardian

They are saying that man-made damage on top of natural variation is really stressing the oceans

That really is an alarming article Meditrina. Between the heat and pollution, it's terrible news not only from an ecological point of view, but also for producers of seafood.

If this continues, as it is thought it will, then we could see some strong storms this autumn.

If this continues, as it is thought it will, then we could see some strong storms this autumn

Could you please explain why?

It takes a while for the warm sea to warm the atmosphere to make the storm systems develop.