Why are marine heatwaves on the rise?

euronews (in English)

Dr. Karina von Schuckmann, a renowned oceanographer and IPCC expert, points to Earth’s energy imbalance as the key driver behind our rapidly warming oceans.

Transcript

00:00The ocean can be seen as the sentinel for planetary warming.

00:10When we measure the ocean by taking all the measurements of temperature

00:14from the surface down to deeper layers,

00:16we can calculate the so-called ocean heat content.

00:21And we see globally that the ocean is warming.

00:24So it tells us that the Earth is out of energy balance.

00:27So that means we receive energy from the sun

00:31and normally this amount of energy after a certain time,

00:36there are a lot of interactions, evaporation, precipitation,

00:40reflection, absorption.

00:42But then this heat is leaving the system

00:45and normally we come to a quasi-equilibrium of energy.

00:50But because we have the greenhouse gases in the system,

00:53there is less energy leaving the system.

00:56And so we have an imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.

00:59So more is coming in and less is going out.

01:03And this leads to an accumulation of heat in the climate system.

01:08So this heat is taken up by the climate components.

01:12And the ocean is a big part.

01:14So it's about 90% of this surplus heat from global emissions

01:19is stored in the ocean.

01:21And that leads us to a warming ocean.

01:23But it tells us also that the Earth is out of energy balance.

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