Oceans absorbed 90% of energy generated by greenhouse gases

Oceans absorbed more than 90% of the heat generated by greenhouse gas emissions, with the remainder impacting air, land and glaciers. This is what a group of researchers at the University of Oxford found, through a study of reconstructing ocean warming data.

The study found that the seas warmed a thousand times more than humans' annual global energy consumption. According to an analysis by The Guardian staff, this amount is equivalent to "1.5 Hiroshima atomic bombs" per second over the last 150 years. The research was published in January in the academic journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Historically, the lack of records has limited researchers to the task of estimating temperature variations in the oceans. For this study, scientists used a new method that employs a mathematical approach developed by Samar Khatiwala, which has been able to reconstruct the amount of carbon absorbed by the oceans since 1871.

Khatiwala explains that the technique works as if the team "painted" the sea in different colors, monitoring how they spread inland. "If we know what the North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomaly was in 1871, we can find out how much this anomaly contributed to the warming of the Indian Ocean in 2018, " he exemplifies.

The researchers found that changes in ocean circulation are responsible for up to half of the observed warming and associated sea level rise in the low and mid-latitudes of the Atlantic Ocean over the past 60 years. However, they cannot yet claim that these phenomena are being caused solely by human actions.

But the fact is that the impacts of global warming, and consequently of the oceans, can already be felt around the world. As the waters warm, they expand, increasing in volume. This not only causes sea level to rise; ends up intensifying natural disasters. According to the research team, reconstructing these ocean temperature fluctuations can help prevent disasters of coastal populations worldwide.