Accelerating Ocean Warming Causing Record High Levels of Ocean Heat Content (OHC)
In recent decades, ocean warming has accelerated and now we have record high levels of Ocean Heat Content (OHC). It is often said that our planet should be called Ocean rather than Earth; similarly, the phrase Global Warming should really be called Ocean Warming. Roughly 93% of the heating of the Earth System is occurring within the oceans.
Regions on our planet that experience the most warming to the least warming are as follows:
1) Ocean surface down to 300 meters (1000 feet)
2) Ocean depths between 300 meters and 700 meters
3) Ocean depths between 700 meters and 2000 meters
4) Ocean depths greater than 2000 meters
5) Land surfaces (including soils)
6) Ice regions (mostly melting)
7) The atmosphere
Since we live on the land, and experience weather via the atmosphere, we usually focus all of out energies on the atmospheric changes, including extreme weather events from atmospheric heating. Yet, slightly less than 1% of the overall heating is heating the atmosphere. In order to have any understanding of Earth heating within the climate system, we clearly need to be cognizant of the breakdown of heating on the planet.
In this video, I discuss the acceleration of the ocean heating over the last few decades, based on analysis in the recent peer-reviewed paper titled "Improved Quantification of the Rate of Ocean Warming". I also discuss the breakdown of the heating within the four major ocean regions, and the implications to abrupt climate system change.
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