Myth’s Note: At first, it was supposed to be a quick joke image; months later down the research rabbit hole, and especially with recent updates, this article has become a bit of an unwieldy monster at nearly nine thousand words. This may take multiple reading sessions to get through. However, in an attempt to help readers keep track and pace themselves, I’ve organized this piece into the following sections:
I. The Watched Pot
II. A Quick Dip into SST Measurement History
III. The Consequences: Thermal Expansion, Ocean Currents, Atmospheric Energy, Habitat Destruction and Marine Heatwaves.
IV. The Causes: Anthropogenic GHG Emissions, El Niño, Aerosols and the Faustian Bargain
If you were inspired by this article to write and publish your own, then I would sincerely appreciate citation. Additionally, and if I’ve set this up correctly, there should be a text-to-speech audio version in the Substack app if you’d prefer to listen.
As always, we’ll start with a meme - and so, without further ado, please enjoy!
I. The Watched Pot
I want you all to imagine, if only for a moment, that you are a far off visitor approaching Earth. Perhaps you’ve managed to catch a ride upon the latest ship passing through the night – the first detected interstellar traveler to pass through our little solar system, ‘Oumuamua (a messenger from afar arriving first).
As you pass us by here on Spaceship Earth, you will definitely notice something rather peculiar about our pale blue dot – it’s a planet rich with water (liquid and frozen), covered by swirling clouds (mostly water vapor) above a few landmasses. Those oceans are essential to the Earth System; not only do our sapphire jewels cover the vast majority of our planet’s surface, but they hold an even greater treasure: they are home to half of all Life’s biomass, Life as we know it.
… and as we’re all beginning to discover, not only are the oceans our little shared pot of seawater, but it’s one that’s beginning to simmer.
In recent memory, we have all been assailed, abused, and assaulted by the ever-present sharing of this particular graph. This arrangement of data, as prepared by ClimateReanalyzer with support from the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, represents the daily average global sea surface temperature (SST) over the extra-polar regions of the ocean (from 60ºS to 60 ºN) over the past four decades. Oh, and don’t worry, I’m certain that the polar oceans are in terrible condition too.
As we can all clearly see, the past two years (2023-2024) have served as a remarkable outlier to the point where, as of May 7th, “the world’s oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year.” However, before we dive into the causes and consequences of global SST temperature rise, we have to take a step back and understand what we’re looking at and why it matters.
In fact, the above-mentioned graph is misleading in two key respects: (1) it only shows data from 1981 onwards (nothing before), but more importantly - (2) the very nature of average measurements cannot accurately reflect regional impacts and its dreadful outliers (such as marine heatwaves). Let’s begin with a quick history lesson:
II. A Quick Dip into SST Measurement History
Our longstanding pursuit to measure ocean water temperatures truly is a story of progress, scientific discovery, and clever innovation, a history that tracks its sources all the way back to the 1800s. It all started with an idea, a rope, a bucket, and a thermometer, all thrown overboard and drawn back up to eagerly waiting hands. Those temperatures were then recorded and kept safe in the logs of the curious and seafaring; little did those early pioneers realize that they would be setting the baseline data that so clearly explains our contemporary conundrum.
The insatiable desire of early scientists to dip their toes to test the waters, whether warm or cold, actually led to revolutionary advances in bucket technology. As the Copernicus Climate Change Service (“Copernicus”) states best:
In the 19th century, for example, SST measurements were made by drawing a water sample up to the ship’s deck in a wooden or canvas bucket. Canvas buckets became more common over time but were found to cool unacceptably under certain conditions; they were later replaced by specially-designed insulated buckets. From the 1930s onward, measurements started to be made in ship engine rooms, using the water taken in at depth for cooling and other purposes.
In contemporary times, we have a plethora of organized data sources at our fingertips – the measurements of a thousand passing ships, to a wide assortment of both stationary and drifting buoys, all peppered across the planet. Personally, I find that our ability to measure the temperatures of the ocean’s first couple of millimeters, no matter its location, to be the most remarkable aspect of this human endeavor.
Consider the instrument of measure in question: from up above in the dark void of space, orbiting satellites hurtling around our home at extraordinary speeds (often thousands of kilometers an hour) use their instruments to measure infrared emissions from the first few millimeters of the ocean’s surface - an awesome fact in the truest sense of the word. And as an essential irony to this story, those very satellites placed up in the heavens above were sent there by the very same fossil fuels that may end up dragging us all down to hell.
A bit of a tangent there, so let’s get back on track.
I’d like to show you a different graph this time, as prepared by Copernicus, to help contextualize rising global SSTs within both a historical and contemporary context:
The average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) over the extrapolar ocean[2] (60°S–60°N) has increased markedly since records began in 1850.
During the second half of the 19th century, the SST was relatively stable. During the first two decades of the 20th century, there was a period of cooling, followed by a period of warming during the 1930s and 1940s. There was then little overall change from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. In the late 1970s, the SST abruptly started to rise and this warming continues.
[…]
Differences between datasets are larger in the earlier parts of the records. This reflects both the sparse data coverage and uncertainties related to measurement techniques [Myth’s Note: I’m having flashbacks to cherry blossoms!].
For clarity and in the context of the graph above, “a SST anomaly is the difference in the current SST measurement form the long-term average temperature in a [given period of time], in a given place”. As NASA helpfully explains, not only can measuring these deviations from the norm provide insight into greater climatic cycles (such as El Niño and La Nina), but SSTs can generally be used to study more regionally based impacts. Examples include the changing nature of ocean currents, or even on a more local level, with the rising presence of marine heatwaves, ocean fronts, or upwellings as they occur.
Furthermore, the historical record reveals the oscillatory nature of global SSTs; similar to planetary tides, global SSTs have also risen and fallen over the 19th and 20th centuries – with a consistent warming trend inexorably marching upwards since around the 1970s. With gradual warming of our oceans, however, the extremes (such as those under El Niño) continue to worsen as the baseline shifts upwards, sort of like reoccurring king tides as global sea levels rise no matter how often the oceans retreat and return.
In sum, if one imagines the Earth’s oceans as a grand heat-battery that fundamentally shapes the weather and climate around us (from atmospheric and oceanic circulation, to precipitation patterns, to much more!), then you can probably imagine why industrial civilization might be in a bit of hot water right now.
III. The Consequences: Thermal Expansion, Ocean Currents, Atmospheric Energy, and Habitat Destruction & Marine Heatwaves
The consequences of rising sea surface temperatures, whether global or local, are remarkable in both their breadth and complexity to such a degree where it led to a weeks-long investigation. I will note, however, that I am not a scientist by any measure, and that I always welcome corrections and additions. For the sake of time and in an attempt to preserve reader interest, I have done my best to ascertain and summarize five key consequences of rising SSTs, all described below:
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Thermal Expansion:
The first key consequence, as you can imagine, comes in the form of thermal expansion. This concept, fundamental to the rules of nature around us, is fairly simple. Most materials, such as water, expand in volume as they become warmer, and shrink/compress as they cool off. The atoms and molecules that comprise said materials – say, H2O – will maintain greater distances from one another as they heat up (note the 4 degree C anomaly!); from what I understand, these molecules “push” their neighbors apart.
With an entire global ocean constantly bombarded by the energies of the sun, and with global warming exacerbated by our own contributions to the atmosphere (GHG emissions), we continue to energize our global oceanic heat-battery. With more than 90 percent of excess heat created by our activities being captured by the oceans, water temperatures rise – and we’re left with the resultant impact of thermal expansion: we know this better as “global sea level rise”. In fact, thermal expansion is responsible for about a third of total sea level rise since 2004; the remainder comes in the form of melting glaciers and ice caps.
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Ocean Currents:
The second consequence is, frankly speaking, a matter of current events. Here on Spaceship Earth, just as the wind blows, so do the oceans flow around the planet. They are, essentially, what makes the world’s water go round – not to mention warmth, oxygen, nutrients, and the organisms of Life itself – a set of global and regional conveyor belts that make Life as we know it possible.
The horizontal travel (circulation) and vertical mixing (convection) of these ocean currents depend upon temperature differences to function: warm water, imbued with less salinity, travels towards the planet’s cooler regions; from there, the water becomes colder and saltier, sinking down lower and flowing back to its point of origin.
However, and as noted in an article to more fulsomely quoted below, “increased warming of both hot and cold ocean currents shows that horizontal mixing of tropical heat to the poles is accelerating, and that vertical mixing with cold deep water is slowing down, leading to increased ocean stratification […].” While I had originally intended to use this research paper for the purposes of understanding coral bleaching, I wanted to commend the authors for their efforts to explain how rising sea surface temperatures adversely change and impact our global oceanic conveyor belts. It’s best to let them explain everything in the quote, complete with a reference to AMOC, so I’ll be quiet now:
Satellite sea surface temperatures (SST) are based on infrared emission from the top millimeters of the sea surface. Changes in sea surface temperature result from alterations in (i) heat transport from the atmosphere due to modified winds and waves, (ii) horizontal transport in surface ocean currents, and (iii) vertical transport due to mixing of surface and deep water [6]. Although SST measurements provide instantaneous images only of two-dimensional surface heat distribution, regional changes in SST can provide insight into shifts in global heat circulation patterns. In the case of possible changes in vertical heat exchange, they provide unique insights that cannot be obtained from subsurface oceanographic measurements (Fig. 7), which are too sparse in time and space to document large-scale or long-term changes adequately.
All major warm currents show extreme warming during 2023, suggesting that heat transport from the tropics to the polar regions has accelerated, causing the most extreme HotSpots of all to be in the axis of the Kuro Shio and Gulf Stream currents. Increasing equatorial to polar heat transport is keeping the tropics relatively cool, making the heating greatest in subpolar oceans, acting as positive feedbacks that accelerate polar ice melting, albedo feedbacks, and increasing ocean stratification, all major global warming feedbacks that have been underestimated and are inadequately modelled in IPCC climate change projections.
All major cold currents also show extreme warming during 2023, suggesting strongly that heat transport in the cold current regions is slowing down, causing decreased upwelling and vertical mixing, and increasing vertical stratification.
The large-scale global patterns seen in all warm and cold currents almost perfectly match the spatial pattern of trends in global sea surface temperatures between 1983 and 2001 [5] (Fig. 8).
[…]
[…]
Decreased vertical exchange in cold surface currents and in upwelling zones increases thermal stratification and slows down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), retains heat longer in the surface ocean, and reduces CO2 exchange among the atmosphere, surface ocean, and the deep sea. The HotSpot maps from year to year suggest that upwelling systems can abruptly shut off, causing sudden sharp rises in regional air temperatures, and reducing air-ocean exchange of temperature and CO2.
Decreased upwelling is causing bottom-up collapse of fisheries in all of the world’s most important upwelling zones, while overfishing is simultaneously causing their top-down collapse. This strongly suggests that most major currents are changing, and some could collapse entirely, which might add to potential collapse of the global AMOC deep water circulation [28] causing longer residence times for deep ocean water, greater heat accumulation at the surface [29], and lower ocean upwelling, primary production and fisheries catches.
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Atmospheric Energy:
It should come as no surprise that the oceans and the atmosphere continuously interact with one another, thereby making it one of the climate’s most important principal drivers. Additionally, seeing as “the top few meters of the ocean can hold as much energy as the entire atmosphere”, our unintentional efforts to supercharge the world’s greatest heat-battery over the past few decades has profound consequences on regional and global climate systems. As Dr. James Hansen explains best:
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, Dr. James Hansen (2009)
Global warming does increase the intensity of droughts and heat waves, and thus the area of forest fires. However, because a warm atmosphere holds more water vapor, global warming must also increase the intensity of the other extreme of the hydrological cycle – meaning heavier rains, more extreme floods, and more intense storms driven by latent heat, including thunderstorms, tornadoes, and tropical storms.
Beyond shifting the tracks of precipitation and water vapour (droughts in some locations, storms in other places, wet-bulb conditions in others yet), it’s why there’s so much ado about the upcoming 2024 North Atlantic hurricane season. SSTs in the North Atlantic are still at record highs, and the upcoming transition to La Nina sets the stage for hurricane formation in the Atlantic Ocean. To conclude this section, a set of lengthy quotes from Scientific American is also in order:
Extreme ocean temperatures are jet fuel for tropical cyclones, driving more active hurricane seasons with bigger, stronger storms. They also can boost heat and humidity over nearby land areas, increasing risks to human health during the warmest parts of the year.
[…] the sustained heat [of the North Atlantic] is raising red flags for the coming Atlantic hurricane season. Several top research groups recently dropped their annual projections, and all of them predict an unusually busy summer.
Colorado State University has forecasted an “extremely active” hurricane season, one of the busiest it’s ever predicted this early in the year. The forecast calls for 23 named storms, which include both hurricanes and tropical storms, with five of them transitioning into major hurricanes at Category 3 or higher.
That’s compared with the long-term average of 14 named storms per season and three hurricanes. If this year’s forecast comes true, that would make 2024 the third most active season on record. The year 2020 still holds the title with a staggering 30 named storms.
Accuweather meteorologists, meanwhile, have predicted 20 to 25 named storms, with four to seven major hurricanes. And forecasters at the University of Pennsylvania have released an even more aggressive season outlook, with a record-breaking 33 named storms.
“In general, pretty much everybody’s on board for a very busy season,” said Phil Klotzbach, who leads the Colorado State University hurricane season forecasts.
There are two major reasons, he said.
The first is that the planet is currently transitioning out of El Niño and into La Niña. This cyclical pair of natural climate conditions causes ocean temperatures to temporarily shift in parts of the Pacific Ocean, warming during El Niño and cooling during La Niña. They also affect weather patterns elsewhere around the globe.
La Niña tends to be associated with more favorable wind conditions for hurricane formation in the Atlantic Ocean, meaning it’s often a precursor to an above-average season.
Extreme ocean temperatures are the second reason for the busy forecast. Warm waters are hurricane fuel, often contributing to a greater number of total storms. They also help hurricanes intensify faster, meaning a greater number of them likely will swell into major storms.
Ocean temperatures are currently hovering around the levels they typically reach in late July — and they’re likely to continue rising as the summer goes on. They may have dipped below record level for now, but they’re likely to remain at least well above average for the rest of the season.
“I think the die is cast at this point,” Klotzbach said.
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Marine Heatwaves & Habitat Destruction
In some perverse sense, I believe that I’ve saved the best (worst?) for last. It’s likely the one that most people will be able to relate to in some small capacity. It’s one of the key flaws associated with viewing surface sea temperatures solely from the perspective of global averages – it diminishes and veils the outliers that pull that average up: the anomalous and often persistent periods of elevated regional ocean temperatures: marine heatwaves.
While heat is mostly conceived of as an invisible threat, the consequences of rapid oceanic warming on ecosystems (whether short-lived or over the long haul) can directly be seen through any number of mass die-off events. Speaking from personal experience, I saw this occur with the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Dome, in which “marine biologists believe [air] temperature above 50 C and low tides led to mass deaths of mussels, clams, and sea stars.” If you live anywhere near the sea, then you likely also have your own personal anecdotes too, considering the records we broke across the world throughout all of 2023.
Despite being contrary to real life circumstances, the boiling frog metaphor becomes remarkably apt: when ocean temperatures surge, how on Earth can creatures of the sea be expected to adapt? They can’t exactly escape the pot before it comes to a “roiling boil”, so to speak. To quote Professor Helen Findlay, biological oceanographer at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory:
Temperature is hugely important in regulating biological processes, especially in the ocean where many creatures cannot regulate their own body temperature. These processes impact how species grow, develop, reproduce and interact to make up a healthy ecosystem. As we see more frequent and longer marine heatwaves and overall increases in ocean temperature, some species will be able to cope and some won’t.
While some creatures are fortunate enough to make their escape to greener pastures, there is little refuge or escape in the waters for less-mobile forms of life. As the most emblematic victim to high sea surface temperatures, coral reefs across the planet are “the most sensitive ecosystem to high temperature, [and] are on the principal of mass extinction from global warming.”, To quote a succinct summary from a wonderfully well-written book by Jeff Goodell:
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, Jeff Goodell (2023)
Marine heat waves are also inflicting massive damage on coral reefs where they are often called bleaching events). Reefs are the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet – they occupy less than 1 percent of the ocean floor, but are home to more than 25 percent of marine life. Reefs are created by millions of coral colonies that build calcium carbonate skeletons.
For the past hundred million years or so, corals have thrived in a happy marriage with microscope plants called zooxanthellae that live embedded in their tissues. Zooxanthellae produce 85 to 95 of the corals’ food through photosynthesis. In return, corals give the plants protection, nutrients, and Co2, one of the ingredients for photosynthetic food production. This marriage, however, is exquisitely sensitive to changes in ocean temperatures. One or two degrees of warming, and the zooxanthellae become toxic to the corals. The corals spit them out and eventually starve to death, leaving behind their bleached skeletons behind.”
Now, it is entirely possible for corals to recover from heat stress given enough time and reduced temperatures, but a continuously inexorable climb in local ocean temperatures - along with more frequent marine heatwave - can simply win this long game of attrition at a much faster rate than evolution could ever permit. It truly cannot be emphasized enough: circumstances have become so terribly bad for the planet’s coral reefs that NOAA has confirmed that the fourth global coral bleaching event is now under way:
Mass bleaching of coral reefs [being] confirmed throughout the tropics, including in Florida in the U.S.; the Caribbean; Brazil; the eastern Tropical Pacific (including Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia); Australia’s Great Barrier Reef; large areas of the South Pacific (including Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Samoas and French Polynesia); the Red Sea (including the Gulf of Aqaba); the Persian Gulf; and the Gulf of Aden. NOAA has received confirmation of widespread bleaching across other parts of the Indian Ocean basin as well, including in Tanzania, Kenya, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Tromelin, Mayotte and off the western coast of Indonesia.
Of course, oceanic ecosystems do not function in isolation and solely in reference to themselves. One particularly fascinating interrelationship I stumbled across was the impact of rising surface sea temperatures on species not typically associated with marine heatwave die-offs: seafaring avian life. A form of life that is otherwise mobile, except when it must undertake its most sacred duty of all – nurturing and caring for their next generation. To quote:
[… A] study released April 25 by the British Antarctic Survey shows that 16 major emperor penguin colonies lost numerous chicks as Antarctic sea ice rapidly dropped to a record low. The threat to emperor penguins has been projected by models, and last year’s mortalities’ connection with the unprecedented sea ice decline shows how extremes, rather than steady warming, can suddenly drive spikes of seabird mortality.
“It suggests to us that the ocean heat waves are reaching some kind of extreme threshold, because the birds are telling us they are really struggling,” Lavers said. “They’re having to try harder and further to find the things that they need.”
She said it doesn’t take a lot of warming to push their prey out range.
“Fish and squid and other prey like krill can move if it gets too warm,” she said. “But birds are really constrained because, especially in breeding season, they can only go so far, and they can only dive to a certain depth.”
In the most recent monitoring in Australia, the fact that many of the dead birds were breeding adults is particularly concerning, because seabirds are slow to reproduce, and the loss of a generation of breeding-age birds can leave a big hole in the population.
“That is what we experienced between November and February in Australia,” she said. “Nearly 100 percent of all the birds that washed up dead and dying on the beaches were breeding adults.”
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And there you have it: five different consequences of rising global SSTs. As I said before, not only do our sapphire jewels cover the vast majority of our planet’s surface, but they hold an even greater treasure: they are home to half of all Life’s biomass, Life as we know it.
And if the oceans go, so will the world – and Life – as we’ve come to know it.
IV. The Causes: Anthropogenic GHG Emissions, El Niño, Aerosols, and the Faustian Bargain
And so, we finally land in the last part of today’s article: what’s driving us into the uncharted territory of rising SSTs? Why on Earth have global sea surface temperature been so unusually extreme over the past two years?
Great questions, both of them.
If you’ve been reading the mainstream news over the past few months, then you’ll typically find two principal candidates, complete with unanimous agreement from most academically-inclined institutions: the ever-increasing volume of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, further exacerbated by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. Let’s break this down real fast:
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Anthropogenic GHG Emissions:
Everyone essentially knows the basic story for this at this point: anthropogenic greenhouse gases trap more heat, which results in the oceans absorbing said heat, which in turn results in an increase in SSTs across the planet. While you can delve into the details, such as in the earlier section on ocean currents, there’s no denying this at this stage. No more questions. Next.
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El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Cycle:
This is another prominent explanation you’ll find in most mainstream news articles, and understanding this particular phenomenon is integral to a working comprehension behind the underlying mechanics of our global climate system. The ENSO is composed of two parts, which typically occurs every three to seven years: El Niño warms the oceans, while La Niña cools them – sort of like the climate system version of yin and yang.
As mentioned in an earlier cited source from Copernicus (who appears to have removed this line with an updated version of the webpage), “the main modular of global SST variability on the inter-annual timescale is the ENSO, a naturally occurring phenomenon where ocean temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific fluctuate, with the last ten years seeing both a strong El Niño and several La Niña events [not including 2023-4].”
As detailed in the Ocean Currents section, along with the image provided above, we can see how warm waters along the western coast of the Americas travel along with the trade winds across the Pacific west near the equator. This, in turn, which in turns brings along warm waters over to east Asia – and so, we have the return of the oceanic conveyor belt we had previously discussed.
During La Niña, these trade winds are stronger, which drives the conveyor belt – and the cold waters beneath the eastern Pacific are drawn up near by the American coast. After nearly three years of consecutive years of La Niña, from 2019 to around 2022, we now find ourselves on the other side of the ENSO: El Niño.
For El Niño, the conveyor belt slows down – the trade winds that blow west begin to taper off, which slows down the cycle, which in turn leaves warmer waters sitting near the aforementioned coastlines. It also happens to have an outsized effect on the global average SST for apparent reasons – the Pacific Ocean’s a big place, comprising around half of the total planet’s ocean area. You keep that warm water still for a bit so it can heat up, and now we’re cooking.
This explanation, however, isn’t sufficient in my mind for a few reasons. Yes, El Niño clearly contributed to higher than normal global average SSTs since 2023 – and this is a very common explanation, especially when one looks back at the public record. The record warming seen around the planet wasn’t just in the tropical Pacific, but around the world in places not typically affected by El Niño. Why? To quote NASA Earth Observatory, followed by Copernicus once again, and finished up with a spicy quote from Professor Daniela Schmidt:
Scientists from NASA have taken a closer look at why. “There are a lot of things that affect the world’s sea surface temperatures, but two main factors have pushed them to record heights,” said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We have an El Niño developing in the Pacific, and that’s on top of long-term global warming that has been pushing ocean temperatures steadily upward almost everywhere for a century.”
The map above shows sea surface temperature anomalies on August 21, 2023, when many areas were more than 3°C (5.4°F) warmer than normal. On that date, much of the central and eastern regions of the equatorial Pacific were unusually warm, the signature of a developing El Niño. As has been the case for weeks, large patches of warm water were also present in the Northwest Pacific near Japan and the Northeast Pacific near California and Oregon. Portions of the Indian, Southern, and Arctic Oceans also showed unusual warmth.
The high SSTs have coincided with the initial development of El Niño conditions, declared by the WMO in early July. This naturally occurring climate pattern of warmer-than-average SSTs in the tropical Pacific leads to a higher likelihood of unusually warm temperatures across many parts of the planet. However, the current El Niño event is still in its early stages and high SSTs outside of the equatorial Pacific basin are also playing an important role. This is particularly true in the North Atlantic.
“Copernicus’s excellent but scary compilation data shows what we had fears. The oceans are warming rapidly, unprecedentedly both in area and the deviation from the long term averages. This cannot be El Niño as it has only started to develop.”
This is where the story got a little more interesting to me – while almost every single news outlet refers to the principal drivers of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and El Niño, my research efforts drove me to consider unexpected sources. For those of you in the audience already familiar with the work, it’s now time to talk what I believe to be a third contributing factor – one that is both natural and manmade. For those who already know what I’m referencing with the Faustian Bargain, please – no spoilers!
To this end, we’ll need to talk about “a combination of contributing factors” to the extraordinarily high temperatures of the North Atlantic first. We’ll begin with something familiar – surface wind speeds, followed by a prelude to the last and final section of this article:
While the causes of the anomalous warmth across the northeastern Atlantic are still a matter of research, there are already several contributing factors to take into consideration. These include atmospheric circulation, air pollution, and climate change trends:
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Surface wind speeds are closely linked to sea surface temperatures because reduced wind speeds lead to a reduction in the mixing of surface water with the cooler water below, allowing the sea surface temperatures to increase. Lower wind speeds also weaken the upwelling of deeper, colder water along the Canary current, an ocean current flowing southward along the coast of West Africa and then westward into the North Atlantic near the Cape Verde islands.
Now, this is similar to the El Niño situation (the slowing conveyor belt), but an understanding of why the North Atlantic remains anomalous yet “supercharged” is important – especially with an upcoming hurricane season that inspires fear across academia. There is, however, one more contributing factor – one that I had not considered, and quite honestly it came as a surprise to me until I started studying this matter further. To continue the above-mentioned quote:
A further consequence of weaker surface winds is a reduction in the movement of Saharan dust westward over the north Atlantic. The lack of vertical mixing in the ocean may have contributed to the rapid increase in the sea surface temperatures, while the reduction in Saharan dust over the North Atlantic also reinforced the increasing temperatures. Typically, Saharan dust has the effect of scattering solar radiation back into space before it reaches the ocean surface.
On June 18, 2020, NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured this visible image of the large light brown plume of Saharan dust over the North Atlantic Ocean. The image showed that the dust from Africa’s west coast extended almost to the Lesser Antilles in the western North Atlantic Ocean. - NASA Worldview
That’s right.
It’s time to talk about aerosols.
Specifically, about those aerosols created by the very same fossil fuels that may end up dragging us all down to hell.
Aerosols and the Faustian Bargain
For those of you who have made it this far into this article, you have my genuine thanks. I hope that I’ve established enough of a scientific foundation for our collective understanding of the general consequences and causes of rising global sea surface temperatures.
In this final section, in our exploration of the impact of man-made aerosols on the climate system and global SSTs, we are now firmly beginning to delve into the complexities associated with the climate-energy system. In the realm of climate science, aerosol forcing is a fascinating topic – but one that is sorely in need of much more research, especially due to the complicated nature of atmospheric chemistry. We’ll begin with a quick review of what exactly an “aerosol” is:
Atmospheric aerosols are microscopic particulars, solid or liquid, suspended in a gas (our atmosphere in this instance). There are many natural sources of atmospheric aerosols, such as desert dust, sea spray, and salt from the oceans, biogenic aerosols from vegetation, wildfire smoke, or volcanoes to name a few.
The main anthropogenic sources of aerosols is emissions from combustion of fossil fuels, which emit a wide range of atmospheric pollutants including particular matter, nitrogen dioxide, and SO2. Sulphur dioxide emissions are the precursor of sulphate aerosol, which is a key player in Earth’s energy balance.
Aerosols’ influence on climate
Aerosols, by scattering, reflecting or absorbing sunlight, reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the lower layers of our atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) considers that there is “strong evidence for a substantive negative total aerosol effective radiative forcing”, that is, the amount of energy entering and leaving the atmosphere, but also acknowledges that “considerable uncertainty remains”.
While aerosols have a direct cooling effect by filtering solar radiation, their effective contribution to global cooling, or warming when they are reduced, also referred to as negative or positive radiative forcing of aerosols, is still a matter of research, and not the easiest, due to the uncertainties of indirect effects such as sulphate aerosol impacts in cloud droplet formation.
Particles and pollutants play a role in increased and reduced cloud formation, complicating the situation further. Generally, sulphate aerosols are considered to act as cloud condensation nuclei, favouring cloud formation, therefore reducing the amount of solar radiation that reaches the surface.
At this point, you may be wondering – why so much emphasis on sulphate oxide emissions? Well, congratulations - this is what leads us all to the crux of today’s article. In the context of rising global SSTs, we are now entering hotly contested territory, especially as it relates to one of our few and truly successful exercises in global co-operation.
In our globalized world, where no stone remains unturned and no landmass left unexplored, international trade plies the waters around the world. For decades, tens of thousands of commercial seafaring vessels (the foundation of our global economic system) have made their way across the oceans whilst burning some of the dirtiest and worst quality fossil fuels imaginable.
The combustion of these bunker fuels would result in one of the world’s great and terrible environmental and public health threats: the uncontrolled emission of sulphur oxides into the air we all share and breathe. In recognition of this threat, and because of the International Maritime Organization’s clean air regulations, we’ve all been fortunate to see the gradual reduction in sulphur content in marine fuels. Rather than a carrot, the stick was quite the incentive – either you burn better fuel, or you’ll be deemed unseaworthy.
In a wonderfully written article published in CarbonBrief back in 2023, Dr. Zeke Hausfather and Professor Piers Forster clearly articulate some of the benefits we’ve enjoyed from this rare case of international collaboration. Not only have global sulphur dioxide emissions dropped by around 10% (especially after the rapid phase out in 2020), but this initiative will likely save tens of thousands of lives annually along the world’s coastlines.
Both Zausfather and Forster, however, note that there is one slight problem: a reduction in sulphur oxide emissions results in a consequential loss of sulphate aerosols. In conservative fashion, they note that the “Carbon Brief analysis shows that the likely side-effect of the 2020 regulations to cut air pollution from shipping is to increase global temperatures by around 0.05C by 2050. This is equivalent to approximately two additional years of emissions.”
That little detail doesn’t outweigh that rare bit of wonderful news, right? Surely it can’t be worse, right?
That’s the unfortunate part: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
As I’ve mentioned, this is a hotly contested subject – and rightfully so.
In this final leg of today’s article, it’s time to review the works of a few maverick minds at the forefront of climate aerosol forcing. Oftentimes considered controversial, yet unnervingly accurate, we’ll need to review the research of a few scientists who are trying to fire off warning signals for those willing to consider and listen to their findings.
It is time to hear out Dr. James Hansen, among many other key researchers he works alongside with, including but not limited to Makiko Sato, Pushker Karecha, and Reto Ruedy. They argue that the impacts of aerosol climate forcing have long been underestimated and understudied by the IPCC and other major scientific institutions.
Unlike more conservative perspectives previously shared (including Copernicus), they hypothesize that our recent global initiative to reduce shipborne sulphate aerosols (especially after 2020) has resulted in an inadvertent experiment in solar radiation management (AKA geoengineering) on a global scale above Earth’s oceans.
When it comes to rising global sea surface temperatures, this noble experiment plays a vital third role (alongside our recent moderate El Nino and the background escalations of gradual global warming) in fostering the recent record-breaking 2023-2024 period; once previously disguised by La Nina from 2020 to 2022, it is now plain for all to see. A source for our five previously mentioned consequences. No good deed goes unpunished.
And as icing on the cake, no matter the health benefits, their removal from the atmosphere may have accelerated the rate of global warming, faster than expected.
It’s time to learn about the Faustian Bargain of climate change. To quote:
Accumulating evidence supports the interpretation in our Pipeline paper: decreasing human-made aerosols increased Earth’s energy imbalance and accelerated global warming in the past decade. Climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing, physically independent quantities were tied together by United Nations IPCC climate assessments that rely excessively on global climate models (GCMs) and fail to measure climate forcing by aerosols. IPCC’s best estimates for climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing both understate reality. […]
[…]
Global absorbed solar radiation (ASR) has increased dramatically since 2010, more than 1.4 W/m2 , equivalent to a CO2 increase of more than 100 ppm.9 The ASR increase is not due to a brightening Sun,10 it is due to a darkening Earth. Our task is to learn how much of this darkening is climate feedback (due to decreasing ice/snow and cloud albedo, i.e., reflectivity) and how much is climate forcing (due to decreasing aerosols). In note, we use the geographical distribution (global map) of ASR to infer that the forcing due to decreased ship aerosols is at least ~0.5 W/m2
[…]
Zonal mean ASR (Fig. 4) provides insight. ASR increases strongly since 2020 at latitudes 30-60°N, the region of reduced aerosols we have discussed. In the region where ship aerosols are expected to have a large effect (30-60°N) and in the entire region where ship effects may be significant (30°S-60°N), ASR increases in 2015-2020 and increases more in 2020-2023.
The Arctic ASR maxima are associated with sea ice minima in 2007, 2012, 2015-16 and 2020, while the double maximum near Antarctica is caused by increasing polynya (open water) near the Antarctic coast and decreasing ice cover at the northern boundary of Southern Ocean sea ice. The region 30°S-60°S is unlikely to have much ship aerosol effect (Fig. 3), so change of ASR there is more likely due to cloud feedback and unforced cloud variability
The climate forcing at 30-60°N implied by ASR is so large that we should expect a detectable surface temperature response. A major scientific issue has been raised by an unprecedented increase of global sea surface temperature (SST) in 2023, so it is appropriate to ask whether there is a relationship between the large increase in ASR and increased SST. Fig. 5 shows that the pattern of temperature change corresponds with the location and temporal development of the ASR anomaly. Coincidence does not prove causality, as high temperatures could cause reduced cloud cover and increased ASR, so we must seek additional evidence.
However, first, let’s draw attention to important information in Fig. 5. Much ado is being made about the increase of global SST in 2023. It suffices to reference a single article11 by Scott Dance, because Dance comprehensively describes fears and speculations of climate researchers who describe ocean surface warming as inexplicable, suggesting that the climate system may be undergoing some fundamental change in the way climate physics operates. Fears are expressed that new climate patterns are being established that will be irreversible on time scales from centuries to millennia.
The scientists reject, without any evidence to the contrary, the evidence we presented that IPCC’s best estimates for climate sensitivity and human-made aerosol forcing are substantial underestimates. They rule out, without evidence, our suggestion that decreases of aerosols, especially those produced by ships, are a significant climate forcing that is causing global warming acceleration. Instead, they make a blatant error by describing the current El Nino as historically strong and express concern that current record warmth may persist even under La Nina conditions.
The largest SST change is at 30-60°N (Fig. 5), the region with decreased aerosols. That SST increase did not appear suddenly in 2023 – it was well underway in 2020. During 2020- 2022 the tropics were in a La Nina cooling trend with the La Nina depth disguised by the effect of accelerated global warming on the temperature of upper ocean layers. Global SST made a big jump in 2023 because tropical, midlatitude, and polar temperature changes were all suddenly in warming phase. There is no basis for fear that new physics has come into play.
[…]
This estimate for the ship aerosol forcing is an order of magnitude (factor of ~10) greater than what follows from IPCC estimates. The 2021 IPCC report (AR6) pegs total aerosol forcing as 1.06 W/m2 in 2019, with 0.22 direct aerosol forcing and 0.84 the indirect effect on clouds. A 2021 update16 reduces the aerosol forcing to 0.98 W/m2 (0.21 direct, 0.77 indirect). Based on this small aerosol forcing, Hausfather and Forster17 obtain a forcing of 0.079 W/m2 for 100% implementation of 2020 IMO18 ship emission limits. Our estimate of 0.5-0.7 W/m2 refers to the actual (~80%) reduction of sulfates from ships. The difference with the Hausfather and Forster value is so large that it must be possible to resolve this issue within a few years.
[…]
The pink range in the Fig. 10 projection was based on Earth’s unprecedented energy imbalance and assumption that the current El Nino was similar to the super El Ninos.35 This El Nino is actually half-baked, not a super El Nino, but the 12-month mean global temperature may still approach ~1.6°C. Peak 12-month temperature during the 2016 super El Nino was 1.34°C, so a 1.6°C El Nino peak would be a warming rate between El Ninos (1.6-1.34)/(8 years) = 0.33°C/decade, an 84% acceleration over the 0.18°C/decade rate of 1970-2010, which is within the 50-100% acceleration expected due to the observed doubling of Earth’s energy imbalance.1 Better assessment of acceleration – independent of El Nino strength – will be provided by the average temperature of the El Nino peak and the next La Nina valley. We expect the average of the El Nino maximum and the La Nina minimum of global temperatures to be ~1.5°C. Given Earth’s huge energy imbalance – more energy coming in than going out – it will be clear that for all practical purposes the 1.5°C global warming level has been reached in the mid-2020s.
The ENSO will continue to wane and wax, with global temperatures inexorably rising higher with each passing year, a cycle that only brings waves of broken records and temporary relief. It’s only up from here, and there is only a slight chance that we might get to determine how fast this ocean of heat rises.
There are few silver linings to this cloud of information: beyond the immediate doom and gloom of this prophecy, research on aerosol climate forcing is in dire need of more investment. What data we do have, as we can see when we compared Hansen with Hausfather above, appears to contrast heavily. It’s a dire sign, a lighthouse in the fog, giving a vague warning of what we must do in the years to come.
At the end of the day, endeavors of science are pursuits of truth – and Dr. Hansen has a knack for speaking truth to power. At times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. It’s a call to action - and I can only hope that the scientific community will heed this message. It’s not too late for other great experiments in global collaboration, especially when our lives are on the line.
Otherwise, in my research, I have only found one potential saving grace with this research on man-made shipborne aerosols and rising global sea surface temperatures. In one recent publication, towards the end, Gwynne Dyer makes a fascinating argument that I worry that policymakers and politicians will support blindly if push comes to shove in an emergency, especially if we do not choose to study this complex predicament.
When it comes to any effort at geoengineering, we will only use the instruments that we have; welcome to the Option of First and Last Resort, a veritable deal with the devil himself:
Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers, Gwynne Dyer (2024)
“The one tried and tested emergency measure that we could turn on at a global scale within weeks is going back to burning high sulfate (3.5 per cent) fuel oil in those 60,000 commercial vessels that carry the world’s trade. They wouldn’t burn it in harbour or while steaming through densely populated coastal areas, of course – people’s lungs matter, after all – but 90 per cent of their voyages are far from land. We could get back the ship tracks and one full degree of global cooling in a couple months if we went all out on that; with more effort we could probably get 2 degrees of cooling or more.
That is a capability that we should henceforward always have available at short notice, because we will be living in the danger zone permanently from now on.”
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And as one last final reminder, and with all of this assumed warming, the IMO’s initiative reduced global sulphur dioxide emissions by around 10% of our total worldwide. That’s all, and that doesn’t include any other manmade aerosols. Keep that in mind with everything I’ve just mentioned.
Welcome to the Faustian Bargain.
You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.
“Human-made aerosols are the likely offset of GHG warming. Such aerosol cooling is a Faustian bargain because payment in enhanced global warming will come due once we can no longer tolerate the air pollution. Ambient air pollution causes millions of deaths per year, with particulates most responsible.”
F ig. 13. Observed global surface temperature (black line) and expected GHG warming with two choices for ECS. The blue area is the estimated aerosol cooling effect. The temperature peak in the World War II era is in part an artifact of inhomogenous ocean data in that period. Source: Global Warming in the Pipeline (2023), Hansen et al.
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If you enjoyed today’s piece, and if you also share my insatiable curiosity for the various interdisciplinary aspects of “collapse”, please consider taking a look at some of my other written and graphic works at my Substack Page – Myth of Progress. That said, as a proud member of this community, I will always endeavor to publish my work to r/collapse first.
My work is free, and will always be free; when it comes to educating others on the challenges of the human predicament, no amount of compensation will suffice … and if you’ve made it this far, then you have my sincere thanks.
For those of you who have endured this article, here’s one last gift for your efforts. You probably feel exactly the same way I do.
;)
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