The world's oceans are hotter than ever before, continuing their record-breaking temperature streak for the sixth straight year.
The world's oceans are hotter than ever before, continuing their record-breaking temperature streak for the sixth straight year. The finding based on the latest data through 2021 comes at the end of the first year of the United Nations' Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development Goals, the 17 inter-locked goals to maintain human societies and natural ecosystems around the globe — many of which are related to ocean health.
The most recent report, authored by 23 researchers at 14 institutes, was published on January 11, 2022 in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. It summarizes two international datasets: from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and from the National Centers for Environmental Information of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that analyze observations of ocean heat content and their impact dating from the 1950s.
"The ocean heat content is relentlessly increasing, globally, and this is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change," said paper author Kevin TRENBERTH, distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, USA. "In this most recent report, we updated observations of the ocean through 2021, while also revisiting and reprocessing earlier data."
Read more at Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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