Intense heatwaves make April 2024 the hottest on record
Millions across South and Southeast Asia grappled with weekslong heat waves in April that continued until May.
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A 2023 study, "The emerging human influence on the seasonal cycle of sea surface temperature," published in Nature Climate Change, provides direct evidence that human activities are affecting the seasonal cycle of sea surface temperature (SST), and this ocean warming is linked to carbon dioxide emission.
"This is breakthrough evidence that there is a human-caused climate change signal in ocean temperatures associated with CO2 increases," says the study's co-author Benjamin Santer, an adjunct scientist and distinguished scholar in the Physical Oceanography Department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) (Sea surface temperatures, 2024).
"We show that a human-caused signal in the seasonal cycle of sea surface temperature (SST) has emerged from the noise of natural variability. Geographical patterns of changes in SST seasonal cycle amplitude (SSTAC) reveal two distinctive features: an increase at Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes related to mixed-layer depth changes and a robust dipole pattern between 40˚S and 55˚S which is mainly driven by surface wind changes," the journal article notes (Sea surface temperatures, 2024).
The authors claim their finding disproves claims that recent temperatures are natural but point out the human influence on the changes in the ocean's seasonal temperatures, which has a "wide-ranging impact on marine ecosystems," says co-author Dr Jia-Rui Shi, a Postdoc with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). Shi adds, "Gaining insight into the anthropogenic influence on seasonality is of scientific, economic, and societal importance" (Sea Surface Temperatures, 2024).
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