Record highs at sea and on land, and a ‘shocking’ decline in Antarctic ice
Record highs at sea and on land
As queries from journalists poured in today (July 10, 2023), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) held a televised press conference to answer journalists’ questions and to confirm a series of announcements about record highs temps on land and at sea, as well as a record decline in Antarctic sea ice. Omar Baddour, Chief of Climate Monitoring at WMO, and Michael Sparrow, Chief World Climate Research Program with a specialization in Antarctica, led the press event.
These scientists said that the first week of July 2023 was the warmest week yet recorded. They said global sea surface temperatures were at a record high in May and June 2023. They spelled out the amount of decline in Antarctic sea ice. And they said these developments were:
… of great concern to the scientific community and indeed to everybody.
The televised event followed an announcement on Twitter by the WMO earlier today of the record temps, which have been measured in recent weeks:
The world just had the hottest week on record, according to preliminary data. It follows the hottest June on record, with unprecedented sea surface temperatures and record-low Antarctic sea ice extent. #StateOfClimate
? https://t.co/NbYM6Nllii pic.twitter.com/5Vaw3ISs8A
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) July 10, 2023
El Niño has just started
We began to hear in late April that large swaths of the world’s oceans were already unusually warm, and that the heat this year was likely to break records, due to the impending onset of El Niño. As Moninya Roughan of the University of New South Wales wrote on The Conversation in April 2023:
Climate change is the big picture. Nine-tenths of all heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans. But there’s an immediate cause too: the rare triple-dip La Niña is over.
During La Niña, cooler water from deep in the ocean upwells to the surface. It’s like the Pacific Ocean’s air conditioner is running. But now the air conditioner is turned off.
The World Meteorological Organization officially announced the onset of El Niño just last week.
‘We’re in uncharted territory’
El Niño is characterized by a warming of the Pacific Ocean. The WMO said that – combined with human-induced climate warming – the weather pattern is expected to hike up global temperatures.
The WMO officials told journalists in Geneva today that impacts can be expected to extend into 2024 and beyond:
… We are in uncharted territory, and we can expect more records to fall as El Niño develops further.
Michael Sparrow said:
During an El Niño year, you get higher temperatures in the atmosphere as well because heat is moving from the oceans to the atmosphere.
We are actually at the beginning of that process, so El Niño hasn’t had as much of an effect as it is going to later in the year. So, we’re seeing these high temperatures in the North Atlantic…despite the fact that El Niño hasn’t really got going yet.
Omar Baddour added that a record year in 2024 is likely, if the strength of El Niño continues to develop in line with forecasts. And he said that daily June temperatures in the North Atlantic had been “dramatically high” compared to usual readings
‘Shocking’ decline in Antarctic sea ice
Meanwhile Antarctic sea ice levels reached their lowest extent for June since satellite observations began. They are a “shocking” 17 per cent below average. An article at UN News reported:
… this year’s readings broke the June 2022 record by a substantial margin and represented ‘a really dramatic drop in the sea ice extent in the Antarctica’ – some 2.6 million square kilometers of lost sea ice.
Michael Sparrow commented that seeing this kind of reduction in sea ice around the Antarctic:
… Really is completely unprecedented.
The Antarctic region is normally thought of being relatively stable; it is much colder than the Arctic. We’re used to seeing these big reductions in the sea ice in the Arctic, but not in the Antarctic.
With ice growth remaining slow, the record #Antarctic sea ice anomaly (negative departure from average) continues to somehow get larger in size…
Seasonal cycle graphs at https://t.co/V0Lt0w20IQ. More info at https://t.co/QXRkBvOtPG. pic.twitter.com/MiVukwJoCn
— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) July 6, 2023
Impact on fisheries
Beyond Antarctica, the WMO warned that the high sea surface temps would also impact fisheries distribution and ocean ecosystems, as well as inland:
It is not only the surface temperature of the water, but the whole ocean is becoming warmer and absorbing energy that will remain there for hundreds of years …
‘When you have a tropical cyclone, everything is affected in the shores, including fisheries, but also including inland,” said Mr. Baddour. “With heavy precipitation that could lead to casualties, displacement of populations, and so on. So, if we say that it is a dramatic change, that also means a dramatic likelihood of extreme weather and climate events.’
Bottom line: The World Meteorological Organization held a press conference on July 10, 2023, to confirm record highs at sea and on land, as well as a precipitous decline in Antarctic sea ice.
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