12 months of record ocean heat has scientists puzzled and concerned | Hacker News Reader

12 months of record ocean heat has scientists puzzled and concerned

nbcnews.com

29 pointsthelastgallon24 comments

One of the things not mentioned are the long term effects of possibly temporary higher-than-expected temperature. Higher temps for even a single year will, for example, cause increased ice melt and loss of ice cover, that will not be replenished by a return to "normal" temperatures.

Important quote from the article before this desencds into the same climate change vs anti-climate change arguments and doom posting

> Human-caused climate change is likely playing a role, researchers said, but is probably not the only factor. Climate models predict a steady rise in sea surface temperatures, but not this quickly, and ocean surface temperatures also fluctuate and can be affected by natural climate variability, including patterns such as El Niño and La Niña.

Climate change is real, and more severe weather and fluctuations is actually something that the models predict. While there is natural variability in the Earth's climate system, the current rate and magnitude of climate change far exceed what can be explained solely by natural factors

Models missed a variable somewhere that will eventually become apparent, likely in ocean thermodynamics (heatsink has reached capacity earlier than expected, or had less capacity than expected, which was previously buffering until now).

I remember awhile back after global warming became undeniable, at some point the denialist rhetoric seemed to move to something like, "what if it's not as bad as scientists think it will be?". To which I always thought, "what if it's worse?". I'm long past doom posting and onto being thankful that I never wanted children.

I just bumped that glass off the table. How I would know that it would fall and break? Surely the fragility of the glass deserves part of the blame.

OK so what happens if every next year will be like this? How much time have we left?

I often think about that for 2 main reasons: most of the scenarios published in the media are the 'low end' of impacts because people involved are concerned about being considered doomerists, and a lot of the predictions and whatever preparations are done are based on extrapolation on known factors.

I'm in a coastal area and I'm really concerned that in 10-15 years time a combination of factors like a strong El Niño, a freak storm with a unlucky mix of wind and tide creating a mega surge and not foreseen changes in ice loss at the poles could make something happen that we'd thought would only be a risk towards end of the century.

No one knows, because apparently something is gravely wrong with our climate models

Something is wrong with our psyche.

We have no time left, since every serious mitigation mechanism is a gigantic effort that should have been started in the 70s.

We're basically behaving like a smoker who's looking for optimistic lung cancer statistics, hoping not having to stop.

People would need to behave very differently. Stop driving so much (where will you live and work? kids need to give up soccer practice, etc.), shipping so much therefore consuming so much, building with concrete, etc. Ain't going to happen. They'll drive their SUV and complain, at least in the USA. Suppliers won't stop supplying until demanders stop demanding.

Just waiting for the cancer to arrive...

Want people to stop driving so much? Do a remote work mandate.

People are not going to stop demanding until we give them the ability to.

My main concern is food supply. Current models estimate less than < 10% reduction in food supply due to concurrent weather extremes [1]. But these models don't take into account the political economy. Simultaneous crop failures in multiple parts of the world can very easily result in food export bans that can seriously exacerbate food shortages in some countries.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38906-7

What ever happened to the narrative of cleaner emissions in shipping impacting ocean temperature more than was anticipated?

Did that narrative ever start? Wouldn't be bad but what's the contribution to the total?

[EDIT] Reduced sulfur emissions leading to less cloud cover and therefore more solar absorption is mentioned in the article, but let's face it: if less pollution makes things worse, things are truly bad. Somehow I understood that sulfur emissions also had their own GHG impact too.

https://www.science.org/content/article/changing-clouds-unfo... is what I vaguely remember. Haven't heard anything new on it.

Edit: Saw your edit rather late. Apologies. I am not clear on your point? I'm asking specifically if this has been further quantified? I don't think it would change how dire the situation is. It may open up reasons for us to lean more into doing some stuff on purpose?

Isn't this just climate change?

Have you even clicked the link ? It's mentioned in the subtitle already

I read it, but it sounds like climate denialism to me

The title implies that climate change is happening (not denialism), and that this record heat can't be explained by our current understanding of climate change.

The fact that significant change is occurring due to human causes does not mean that all change can or must be explained this way.

If current models do not explain this, it either means:

1) Current models are wrong (possible)

2) Something unrelated to our traditional notion of human-caused climate is happening (also possible)

The house is still on fire, but we may have missed some dynamite we left in the garage.

> The huge temperature anomaly — which climate change alone is unlikely to explain

> Abraham suspects the main cause of the trend is climate change, with some natural ocean processes that aren’t well understood playing a role, as well.

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