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Highest-ever ocean temperature measured as powerful El Niño forms
- andsoitis 18d ago> The global average sea-surface temperature hit a record 70 degrees on Aug. 22, according to Europe’s Earth observation agency Copernicus, which has been tracking the metric daily since 1979. The previous single-day record was measured in March 2024. 70°F is 21°C Fish don't have AC.
- squidlib 18d agoHow deep is the surface measurement though? It’s a record nonetheless, but a few meters deeper - where fish actually live is likely cooler.
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- andsoitis 18d agoDeep ocean temperatures have also been rising over the decades: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024GL111229 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
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- timr 18d agoYes, but it’s not uniform at all. The paper shows cooling in some parts of the north, and heating in the southern latitudes, along with significant variations by depth. There’s a lot of nuance in this stuff - far more than global average surface temperature (which is primarily good for scary headlines) and “fish don’t have AC”.
- andsoitis 18d agoDo you think the general statement “ocean temperatures are rising” is misleading?
- timr 18d agoNo, but it's so vague that it's meaningless.
- 2legit2quit 18d ago> Yes, but it’s not uniform at all. Translation: "I expect all areas to be affected the same, despite axial tilt, fluid dynamics, etc."
- timr 18d agoNo. Not everyone boils everything down to a sophomoric take.
- anakaine 18d agoThat's not the issue, though I recognise the poster above was remarking about fish. High surface temps means more cyclones / typhoons / hurricanes, more coral bleaching, lower fish breeding and feeding because reefs die, impacts out food chains and destroys our homes. Im Australian, so it also means droughts, water restrictions, and significant increases in bushfire number and severity after a few years of drought. Drought followed by cyclone, or bulk rain events causes catastrophic flooding. Its a shit show.
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- userbinator 18d agosince 1979 And what about the years before that?
- mlcrypto 18d ago[flagged]
- BLKNSLVR 18d agoHint: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- jay_kyburz 18d agoEarth has, human civilization as we know it has not.
- tzs 18d agoThat's like saying coastal sea level rise is nothing to worry about in places like Florida because that whole area was at the bottom of an ocean 100 million years ago.
- andsoitis 18d agoDid you mean “humans or capitalism”? In any event, who cares what the climate was like before humans walked the planet? We do care about what it is like while we’re around because it puts significant constraints on our lives.
- defrost 18d agoOther agencies tracked ocean thermoclines. Eg: Totally not tracking submarines, we're looking at dolphins and whales! With notable funky bespoke hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP Scripps itself has been running since 1903.
- while_true_ 18d agoEl Niño events are more than 36% stronger today than they were 40 years ago due to climate change.[1] [1]J. E. Cole et al., Recent strengthening of eastern Pacific ENSO in the last millennium paleorecord. Science DOI:10.1126/science.ady2660
- uncomputation 18d agoMaybe I am pessimistic but it seems no one cares about climate change these days. All of Los Angeles is sweltering now. Just pointing fingers and dropping individual names while the world continues to heat slowly. Any suggestions to get involved are welcome, I don’t want to be just a complainer.
- shikshake 18d agoGet politically involved, vote and and volunteer for local pro-climate candidates. Talk about and promote public transport, cycling, better zoning and infrastructure etc. People underestimate the power of local politics. On a macro scale all you can really do is vote for national level candidates that care about these issues. Luckily it’s not hard to see which ones do and which ones don’t.
- SoftTalker 18d agoIndividually you can't do anything. You can drive an EV, set your AC to 78, or whatever makes you feel good but only national governments can make the regulatory changes that will really have an impact. I even roll my eyes at my city council spending even one second on climate change policy (and they have spent whole meetings on it). Our city of 80,000 people could disappear from the face of the planet and it would not make a bit of difference.
- iLemming 18d agoWe're getting cooked. I'm already paying 10-times more for water usage than I spend on gas, and 5-times more on electricity bills - AC's running non-stop. That's crazy, because I live in the area where you can't even walk to buy a piece of bread - we drive all the time. I fully expect for businesses very soon to operate at night. Costco, Walmart, groceries, even libraries will be working all night in places like Arizona, Texas and some parts of California.
- sarchertech 18d ago> I'm already paying 10-times more for water usage than I spend on gas Are you irrigating an enormous yard?
- edoceo 18d agoMaybe they mean consumption is the same but price is up.
- sarchertech 18d agoThe only way I can read what they wrote to mean that is if they are saying water costs $30-40 a gallon.
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- iLemming 18d agoHave you never used a garden hose? Do you know that a regular, average hose left running overnight can waste like 5,000 gallons of water? My HOA enforces a rule - you must keep at least two trees per household. Trees need water. Not that much, of course, I shared the overnight hose number just for the sense of measure. Now you do the math - couple of trees, bathrooms, showering, drinking, cooking - that water usage adds up.
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- AndrewKemendo 18d agoYou can’t get a more direct example of failure of collective action. I’m not sure the human species has the capacity to actually coordinate behavior at the scale needed, irrespective of any future warning etc…, to be able to combat this
- esikich 18d agoPeople can't even think big enough to zipper merge properly. We are absolutely cooked.
- BearOso 18d agoWe all reduced CFC use and stopped ozone depletion. The problem with climate change is that there is a huge incentive to not fix it, and the culprit is not just rich oil corporations. Many countries subsist solely on oil profits and have no other natural resources to sustain themselves, i.e. Saudi Arabia. Those countries have influence over others like the US. There are alternative options already available to replace fossil fuels for most things. In first-world countries, the only thing stopping a transition is the loss of corporate profits.
- Gigachad 18d agoIronically the war in Iran was probably one of the most effective ways to cut oil consumption.
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- AndrewKemendo 18d agoI’m not sure if you’re aware of how much oil it takes to run a war
- Gigachad 17d agoAll that does is drive up prices which cause other users to cut back. Total oil consumption is directly tied to production. Oil production is stalled right now so less is being used, and the high prices are speeding up the electrification of everything.
- scronkfinkle 18d agoSometimes I wonder if the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been growing more popular is a tactical tool used by individuals who don't actually believe in it but instead have accepted that they would rather be wealthy and destroy the planet and are pricing in the consequences of that decision.
- OgsyedIE 18d agoThere's also a prisoner's dilemma situation. Suppose you're some wealthy media magnate promoting culture war distractions from your portfolio of asset strippers and polluters, thinking of defecting to team decency. That hypothetical you can look around at the rest of the global political class and see that the rest of the establishment will destroy the livability of the biosphere whether that hypothetical you starts putting all of your money into unions, green technology and BECCs or not and conclude that the only available choice is whether to be poor in a collapsing world or rich in a collapsing world.
- matchbok3 18d ago[flagged]
- bix6 18d agoBot
- matchbok3 18d agoThanks for reporting my comment instead of engaging. Great contribution!
- CursedSilicon 18d agoNot a bot. Just someone with reaaaallly bad takes it seems
- bix6 18d ago
- timnetworks 18d agoThe planet started out a ball of molten stardust, completely inhospitable to life as we know it. But then there was not only life, but life detached from the ground too. Then K-T event wiped out almost all of it. But the planet kept going! It can be argued it got better and more diverse. Are people in trouble? Perhaps. If we stop technological achievement in the name of a few degrees centigrade, then definitely.
- Fricken 18d agoTechnological advancement needs to advance towards being sustainable or else it's a joke.
- andsoitis 13d agohow can you know whether a particular technological advancement will be sustainable or not? specifically, can you identify a technological advancement that you question the sustainability of?
- OgsyedIE 18d agoWith the depletion of the coal and oil deposits the industrial revolution relied on the first time around, it is now locked in that this century is human civilization's only shot at reaching some kind of abstract technology escape velocity. Crash now and there will never be a second chance, just iron age stuff in a harsher environment for however many tens of millennia it takes to have some random pandemic that wipes the descendants out occur.
- livinglist 18d agoI scuba dive in Monterey, CA every other weekend, and just came back from a liveaboard in Galapagos in May. The water is much warmer this year, and it is very noticeable because usually in Galapagos, divers are expected to wear 8mm wetsuit or dry suit to be comfortable in the water, but this year even a 5mm made me feel too warm. In Monterey, water temp used to be around 11-13°C but this year it’s easily above 16°C, divers also reported more sightings of spiny lobsters which were rare in Monterey because water was too cold for them.
- tito 18d agoStripe's climate researcher Zeke Hausfather is coming to AirMiners this Wednesday to share about El Niño climate science, the impacts, and then we're going to work on what we can do to avert the worst impacts of this storm. Come join! https://luma.com/tu0uvbx1 https://luma.com/tu0uvbx1
- NegativeLatency 18d agoCCS is a scam promoted by the fossil fuel companies
- tito 18d agoI lean towards agreeing with you. That said, people often confuse carbon dioxide removal with CCS. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) generally refers to "carbon neutral" technologies to pull carbon dioxide out of emissions. At some kind of theoretical best, CCS is carbon neutral, so the best CCS can ever hope to offer is being neutral like solar, wind, or nuclear. Carbon dioxide removal refers to a different process. Carbon dioxide removal is the process to pull carbon dioxide back out of the air itself. It's not a supplement or replacement for carbon neutral technologies. Every model proposed by the IPCC to stay at 1.5C of warming requires billions of tons of carbon dioxide, alongside zeroing out new emissions. Also, this event is about El Niño.
- ChrisArchitect 18d agoDiscussions: Oceans hit highest temperature on record https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424606 Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313428 Climate change is strengthening El Niño, coral records suggest https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49475404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49475404 The Strongest El Niño Ever Forecast and the Hunger It Will Leave Behind https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281960
- Noaidi 18d agoI can’t overstate how it is. And you will need to be prepared. Be prepared for floods and just weird weather. While we humans are adaptable to these weather changes, plants and animals are not. This is going to affect feed crops for both humans and animals. So I would expect some inflation because of this. I also want to state for those of you living in Southern California to be prepared for a possible earthquake. It’s a salton sea fills up with a lot of water quickly It could most likely trigger an earthquake. But those are the impacts just in the United States. We might be looking at food price shocks in combination with the ongoing war in Iran. By the way for those of you complaining about the heat in Los Angeles, it’s not really the heat. It’s the humidity. The LA basin has had record high dewpoint temperatures. That’s why it’s so uncomfortable. How do we fix this? The only thing I can think of is a spiritual awakening where owning and doing less is more attractive than flying around in jets and building AI data centers.
- timmmmmmay 18d agothey took the sulfur out of the shipping fuel and everything accelerated very quickly. nobody's even talking about it anymore
- EdwardDiego 18d agoIf you really think that's the main cause, I'd be interested in your sources.
- piloto_ciego 18d agoSo, any legit climate scientists or oceanographers here? Or agronomists? How abnormal (and not just, the climate graphs for the last century say this is bad) is this on a longer timescale. Like, when was the water this warm last? I feel this is going to be a "big one" this year? And probably the culmination of extreme heat, crop failures, and high diesel prices are going to trigger more conflict too? To be clear, I'm an optimist, I think things will be "good" in the long run, but I have a feeling the next 12-24 months are going to be a doozie with the 4 or 5 things converging... Like, I don't want to have this crazy flamewar thing, but like, what do the numbers say, how fucked is this particular one?
- jojocool0501 18d agoHow about a new perspective on this, the biotic pump? "When you are confined within the civilized scientific discourse and can't cry out 'It's the biosphere, stupid!'" Please read what Anastassia Makarieva had to say on "the kid" 2 years ago: https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/seeing-forests-through-clouds-a-300 https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/seeing-forests-throu... Could we stop chopping down trees from primary forests in the Amazon to save the planet for us humans? Could we manage with a little less beef and soy?
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- owebmaster 17d ago> Could we stop chopping down trees from primary forests in the Amazon to save the planet for us humans? Keep the Amazon out of this. From whichever country you are, you should demand your government to grow and keep some forest carrying the economic burden for that. It's too easy to point to poor countries so the rich ones can keep consuming like kings without guilty.
- gmuslera 18d agoJust 5 days ago the news was https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62m4gpnp78o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62m4gpnp78o. Different wording, few measurements later, this will run that way til December at the very least. We can shout another bird most days till there, or discuss the projections to the peak of the event (and how they usually correcting it upwards), that may give a better warning.
- antibarbarus 18d agoForget about global trends, forget "unprecedented events", this isn’t rocket science, I’ve seen the climate shift myself, in my lifetime, and I’m not even that old. It’s difficult to imagine how people elsewhere aren’t seeing the same, like we aren’t inhabiting the same reality somehow? In Continental Europe we used to have winters with regular snow even in large cities. I know, I really liked playing in the snow as a kid. It was cold. For the past dozen or so years, there is less and less snowfall, with milder and milder winters. Snow in the cities amounts to maybe a week or three of weak drizzle. Forget about what my grandpa remembered about how the Danube used to freeze over so you could walk across the river. What we do seem to get more of is wild, torrential rainfall in sudden bursts amid long dry spells. Bad for infrastructure, even worse for agriculture. The climate is changing here, and it’s getting hotter, not colder or more balanced. Wildfires are increasing in frequency, and God knows what’s going on with the country’s underground aquifers, we never seem to care about those, because we’ve always just had plenty, so why worry. Of course all this is easily dismissed as anecdata. But when I read about the research labelling Europe the fastest warming continent, I don’t have trouble believing it. Sure, someone living in the northernmost reaches of Europe might not see anything, yet, this doesn’t mean the research is wrong. Worse yet, the infrastructure for dealing with this simply isn’t there in most countries, and I’m not talking about stuff that will "reverse global warming" or whatever, I’m talking steps that will keep cities livable in the short to medium time-span. Most societies are unwilling to mentally deal with or consider what might happen two, three decades down the line. They aren’t willing to contend with a future where their children will have to endure water rationing, curfews, economic and other hardship, mass migration or any number of scenarios that will affect their wellbeing. We have to greenify the streets, reduce the number of heat-producing vehicles, upgrade the pipelines, irrigation, water collection, and other systems across European cities... I have a sneaking suspicion it will take some massive, un-ignorable crisis, like a record number of elderly people dying from heat exposure to actually start investing in any of this. And by then it might be too late.
- classified 18d agoI suspect in the coming years we will have new temperature records, in the ocean and elsewhere.