Shattered Heat Records as the Globe Moves Toward Climate Tipping Point - by Jan Wondra - The Ark Valley Voice

Shattered Heat Records as the Globe Moves Toward Climate Tipping Point - by Jan Wondra - Ark Valley Voice

Greenland ice sheets are melting, and the pace of melt is speeding up. Image courtesy of Medium.com

The world’s oceans are shattering heat records, and the subcontinent of India is in the grip of a historic heat wave that is responsible for mounting deaths, water shortages, and destructive wildfires. India is reporting a surge in heat-related illnesses and deaths. Across much of the country, daytime highs hover around 120 degrees and nighttime temperatures don’t drop below 90 degrees. India has always been warm — but not this hot.

In New Delhi this week, recorded temperatures reached 126 degrees Fahrenheit, (52 Celsius) breaking all-time records.

The backdrop to India’s misery: oceans around the world have broken temperature records every single day for the past year. To be entirely factual, the entire planet has been hotter every month, than prior recorded temperatures. Until now, the oceans have been our planet’s air conditioning; absorbing most of the heat that our dependence upon fossil fuels has merrily pumped into this watery sponge. But something is happening and it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that the average global sea surface temperature reached a new monthly high of 21.07 degrees Celsius (69.93 degrees Fahrenheit (source: Copernicus Climate Change Service). Scientists have run out of polite, normal-sounding words to describe what they are seeing.

“The massive, massive records” set over the past year are beyond what scientists would expect to see even considering climate change,” said Climatologist and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Gavin Schmidt.

North Atlantic Current. Image courtesy of Amdros.3

It’s true that this year compared to a year ago, the planet is under the influence of an El Nino event that began in July 2023, different than the La Nina climate pattern that tends to lower temperatures. But adding “the El” on top of the temperature elevation is beginning to freak out the normally careful scientists. There are a couple other factors, that have turned the waters around states like Florida into a tepid bathtub.

The northern hemisphere is heading into the hot summer months after the southern hemisphere just had its hottest winter on record. Climate experts warn that the punishing temperatures test the limits of human physiology. But they are warning of something just as concerning: other major environmental dangers.

The rising ocean temperatures could turn off the North Atlantic Current, the massive conveyor belt that moves warm water north and cold water south across the Atlantic Ocean extending the Gulf Stream northeastward. It is connected to the global Meridional current that regulates the entire globe. It’s sometimes called the North Atlantic Drift and North Atlantic Sea Movement. That current is so big, and so powerful that it is the size of 8,000 Mississippi Rivers. This current redistributes heat globally. It determines weather from the equator to Europe, from crop production in Africa, to sea level rise on the East Coast. And yes since it pulls heat out of the Gulf Stream and Gulf of Mexico, it can impact the climate here in the Rocky Mountains too. If that current stops, our entire climate, not just seasonal weather will change.

As reported by NPR, a new study by Nature.com“finds the collapse of the current, which is known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC, could happen far sooner than scientists have previously thought, possibly within a few decades, as a result of human-caused global warming.”