When four hurricanes of extraordinary strength tore through Florida last fall, there was little media attention paid to the fact that hurricanes are made more intense by
warming ocean surface waters.
As mentioned above, hurricanes feed and grow on
warm ocean surface waters.
Decrease in sea ice and snow cover are the prime causes, energy being used to melt ice and
warm the ocean surface waters.
Not exact matches
El Niño is an abnormal periodic
warming of
surface ocean water off the Pacific coast of South America.
The Atlantic
Ocean surface circulation is an important part of the Earth's global climate, moving
warm water from the tropics towards the poles.
Rich wildlife at this Southern
Ocean island faces
surface waters 1.8 degrees F
warmer in winter and 4.1 degrees F
warmer in summer than they were 80 years ago
The cycle of Pacific
Ocean surface water warming and cooling has become more variable in recent decades, suggesting El Niño may strengthen under climate change
They identified wind patterns that mixed the
warmer surface and colder deep
waters to cool the
ocean's
surface and reduce the intensity of the storm.
And around Antarctica, where even the
surface ocean water is already quite cold and dense, some of that
water in the
ocean depths, which is also carbon rich, eventually
warmed enough so that it became less dense than the
water above it.
Higher sea
surface temperatures led to a huge patch of
warm water, dubbed «The Blob,» that appeared in the northern Pacific
Ocean more than two years ago.
During El Niño events,
warmer surface water in the east Pacific
Ocean changes the world's weather.
Driven by stronger winds resulting from climate change,
ocean waters in the Southern Ocean are mixing more powerfully, so that relatively warm deep water rises to the surface and eats away at the underside of the
ocean waters in the Southern
Ocean are mixing more powerfully, so that relatively warm deep water rises to the surface and eats away at the underside of the
Ocean are mixing more powerfully, so that relatively
warm deep
water rises to the
surface and eats away at the underside of the ice.
The simulations suggest that over decades, these
warming events dramatically perturb the
ocean surface, affecting the flow of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a system of currents that acts like a conveyor belt moving
water around the planet.
The more heat in the Pacific, the bigger the El Niño, and right now, 150 metres below the
surface, a ball of
warm water is crossing that
ocean.
They found that adding five years of strong trade winds created powerful
ocean currents that buried the
warm surface water, bringing cooler
water to the
surface.
Charlie's research told him that during El Niño weather cycles, the
surface seawaters in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, already heated to unusually high levels by greenhouse gas — induced
warming, were being pulsed from a mass of
ocean water known as the Western Pacific
Warm Pool onto the reef's delicate living corals.
So, for example, a big part of what drives a hurricane is the fact that you've got a lot of
warm water near the
surface of the
ocean that is transferring heat into the air, and that's what's moving up, and that is a big part of then what's propelling the entire bigger storm system.
The opposite occurred in 1997 and 1998, when
warm surface waters in the Pacific
Ocean brought about by El Niño pushed rainfall systems north, leaving parts of the southern and eastern Amazon forest dry and prone to fires.
As of March 2013,
surface waters of the tropical north Atlantic
Ocean remained
warmer than average, while Pacific
Ocean temperatures declined from a peak in late fall.
They pointed to a
warmer atmosphere, which carries more
water vapor to worsen rainstorms, as well as to higher
ocean surface temperatures, which intensify hurricanes.
Schimdt has found evidence that
warm ocean currents and convective forces beneath Europa's frozen shell can cause large blocks of ice to overturn and melt, bringing vast pockets of
water, sometimes holding as much liquid as all of the Great Lakes combined, to within several kilometers of the moon's icy
surface.
The wind keeps a layer of
warm water near the
surface in Indonesia, reducing the temperature difference across the Indian
Ocean and so minimising the strength of positive IOD events.
El Nino's mass of
warm water puts a lid on the normal currents of cold, deep
water that typically rise to the
surface along the equator and off the coast of Chile and Peru, said Stephanie Uz,
ocean scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Even as the
surface warms, the deeps remain cool, and this cold
water will continue to periodically push the
ocean out of the El Niño state.
11 Activity peaks this month, when
ocean -
surface waters are
warmest.
Due to the cooling dissolved material now partially precipitates as fine particles, which are carried by the
warm water to the
ocean's
surface.
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion A technology using the temperature difference between cold, deep ocean waters and warmer surface waters to generate electri
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion A technology using the temperature difference between cold, deep
ocean waters and warmer surface waters to generate electri
ocean waters and
warmer surface waters to generate electricity.
It's unclear whether this year's strong El Niño event, which is a naturally occurring phenomenon that typically occurs every two to seven years where the
surface water of the eastern equatorial Pacific
Ocean warms, has had any impact on the Arctic sea ice minimum extent.
«Cold, deep
water from this little area of the Nordic seas, less than 1 % of the global
ocean, travels the entire planet and returns as
warm surface water.
Warm and saline
water transported poleward cools at the
surface when it reaches high latitudes and becomes denser and subsequently sinks into the deep
ocean.
El Niño has helped to boost temperatures this year, as it leads to
warmer ocean waters in the tropical Pacific, as well as
warmer surface temperatures in many other spots around the globe, including much of the northern half of the U.S..
Invasive species are entering the region with or without shipping, says Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado;
warming of the Arctic
Ocean's
surface temperatures has already increased mixing with foreign
waters and all the microbes they contain.
For example, scientists have found that El Niño and La Niña, the periodic
warming and cooling of
surface waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific
Ocean, are correlated with a higher probability of wet or dry conditions in different regions around the globe.
About 19 months after the wind churned the
ocean, cycling
warm deep
waters upward and sending the cold
surface waters down, the Totten ice shelf was noticeably thinner and had sped up.
The study marks the first time that human influence on the climate has been demonstrated in the
water cycle, and outside the bounds of typical physical responses such as
warming deep
ocean and sea
surface temperatures or diminishing sea ice and snow cover extent.
Prevailing scientific wisdom asserts that the deceleration of circulation diminishes the
ocean's ability to absorb anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere as
surface waters warm and become saturated with CO2.
This shift strengthens the
ocean currents that bring
warm, salty
water to the
surface, where it accelerates the melting of Antarctic ice.
The study bolsters the idea that Mars once had a
warmer climate and active hydrologic cycle, with
water evaporating from an ancient
ocean, returning to the
surface as rainfall and eroding the planet's extensive network of valleys.
With higher levels of carbon dioxide and higher average temperatures, the
oceans»
surface waters warm and sea ice disappears, and the marine world will see increased stratification, intense nutrient trapping in the deep Southern
Ocean (also known as the Antarctic
Ocean) and nutrition starvation in the other
oceans.
The deep circulation that drives
warm surface waters north is weakening, leading to a cooling of the north Atlantic relative to the rest of the
oceans.
As the Earth continued to cool from Years 0.1 to 0.3 billion, a torrential rain fell that turned to steam upon hitting the still hot
surface, then superheated
water, and finally collected into hot or
warm seas and
oceans above and around cooling crustal rock leaving sediments.
With the removal of the
warm surface waters, an upwelling current is created in the east Pacific
Ocean, bringing cold
water up from deeper levels.
During normal conditions, trade winds blow to the west across the tropical Pacific
Ocean, piling up
warm surface water in the western Pacific, and cold, deeper
water rises up, or upwells, off the west coast of South America.
These strong, constant winds push and drag the
warm surface water westward, «piling» it up and holding it in the western Pacific
Ocean basin.
The research published in Nature Communications found that in the past, when
ocean temperatures around Antarctica became more layered - with a
warm layer of
water below a cold
surface layer - ice sheets and glaciers melted much faster than when the cool and
warm layers mixed more easily.
It carries
warm water along the Atlantic
Ocean surface, moving from south to north.
South of Spitzbergen, the
oceans have been ice free the past 2 winters, reason being, the
warm waters from the Gulf Stream are travelling further north, and closer to the
ocean surface, only 25 meters at the last measurement, The
ocean temperature has been +2 C instead of -2 C.
The Center for
Ocean Solutions writes: «Between 1951 and 1993 zooplankton biomass off Southern California decreased by 80 % as a result of
warming surface waters.»
CO2 is more soluble in colder than in
warmer waters; therefore, changes in
surface and deep
ocean temperature have the potential to alter atmospheric CO2.
In the West Pacific, the
warm surface waters reach deeper than anywhere else in the
ocean.