It’s Getting Hot in Here: Ocean temperatures are on the rise

GLOBAL— A new study conducted under Plos Climate published on Feb. 1 written by Kisei R. Tanaka, and Kyle S.Van Houtan found more than half of the planet’s ocean surface has regularly surpassed historical extreme heat thresholds starting in 2014. The study concluded such excessive ocean temperatures, fueled by climate change, have become the “new normal.” These heat extremes threaten crucial marine ecosystems, including coral reefs, seagrass meadows, and kelp forests, altering their structure and function while jeopardizing their ability to provide sustenance to human communities.     Although 2014 was the first year where more than half of the ocean surpassed the threshold, this upward trend continued in the following years reaching 57 percent of the ocean by 2019, according to the study.   Scientists have analyzed sea surface temperatures over the last 150 years, from 1870-to 2019, which have risen because of global heating. They found that extreme temperatures occurring just two percent of the time a century ago have occurred at least 50 percent of the time across the global ocean since 2014.   “This is a superb paper,” said President and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific Peter Kareiva. “They [the authors] used ocean sea surface temperature data from 1870 to 2019. The data were...