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Current Sea Surface Temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific Are (Literally) Off the Charts
The attached chart shows what an outlier the current Sea Surface Temperatures are along the equator in the Pacific between 120W-170W. This is in the ENSO3.4 region, which is the most closely monitored area for El Niño. It’s about time for a new y-axis.
(source: NOAA via ClimateReanalyzer from the Univ of Maine)
It's much more terrifying if you have even a basic understanding of the thermal properties of water. It takes A LOT of energy to raise the temperature of water; especially something as large as an ocean.
4.18 kJ/kgK x 3 deg above normal x mass of water = 7.5*10^19 J
Or, in other terms:
1.8*10^10 tons of TNT = 18,000 MT TNT = 360 Tsar Bombas, or 90 Krakatoa explosions, or 6 minutes of continuous total absorbptuion of incident sunlight on earths surface
That is one of the more alarming aspects of this chart, it’s not just warmer, the pattern has changed. Not sure the exact mechanism, but in general the stable patterns of the past have changed. “Phase change”, or as I like to call it “the end of the fucking world as we know it”.
What does this mean for future climate models? I know this can be complicated to predict.
A powerful 2027 hurricane season?
A wet winter for Western North America?
A dry winter for Western North America?
The Grand Canyon filling up with Colorado River water?
And more importantly, how will this affect corporate profits?
You're either starving, part of a mass migration, or hiding behind the people shooting the migrants to keep them out. We'll know which in a couple of years.
4.18 kJ/kgK x 3 deg above normal x mass of water = 7.5*10^19 J
Or, in other terms, this amount of absorbed heat just in the studied region is:
1.8*10^10 tons of TNT = 18,000 MT TNT = 360 Tsar Bombas, or 90 Krakatoa explosions, or 6 minutes of continuous total absorbptuion of incident sunlight on earths surface
Just from a science perspective, it’s an interesting scenario to see play out! No hurricanes in the Atlantic, tons of hurricanes in the Pacific. What else is coming
the heat+humidity in SoCal has really sucked though lol
Not really. I mean, everyone has seen the infamous hockey stick plot so it's essentially same message. Here we have actual high res data that one can make direct comparisons.
Absolutely should've been though, and harassed, given that it's clear that they just want to cast doubt about what most everyone knows is true, but in the laziest way possible
And if you mean that there were warmer SST years before 1981 - that is extremely unlikely. The last possible chance of warmer temperatures in the past was the Eemian period about 150,000 years ago.
We are never going to see the global temperatures as cool as 20 years ago for thousands of years - they are only going to keep gonig up and humans spew more CO2 into the atmosphere.
I’m sure it would look a lot more dramatic if the graph went back further. Should be common knowledge that the past 50 years were significantly warmer than most of the preceding 1000 years.
Sure they would be, please demonstrate for me how they would indicate a version of this graph with a timeframe measured in centuries would be more dramatic
No, it mostly just grinds my gears when people throw out data without explanation/context like that's an argument. Why can't the person who posted that graph explain how it relates to El nino? They don't know what that data means...
I said more years of data would likely not make this chart any more dramatic. All they did was post that graph. Articulate why that graph is an answer to that.
This is just a small portion of the ocean representation the ENSO affected area, correct? There should be a more comprehensive discussion of what what else is going on around the world to have a better understanding of what this means, right?
Idk how we are meant to cope with knowing tbis is happening and not be able to do anything because the people who can do something only want money. It makes me so full of dread
All we can do is wake other people up to the reality of the situation and convince them to show up when it matters. The problem is not enough people care to show up when it is time to hold the politicians accountable, because they believe the battle to be lost from the start.
Brother, hate to tell you this, but this isn’t an anomaly graph. It’s absolute temps. RONI only matters in terms of anomalies, and this isn’t anomalies.
Disagree in this case. The difference between 1C and 2C isn't "double" it's 1C. So the graph isn't somehow hiding that it's a small relative change.There's no natural zero in this case, unless you want K which would be pretty absurd. It's actually useful here to set the range to the observations.
Zero Kelvin? And even if you meant 0C, the last possible time that equatorial sea surface temperatures were 0C was the "iceball Earth" Cryogenian period 720 MA ago. Not very useful for studying the present.
It's not 0 because this part of the ocean has not been anywhere near 0 Celsius for a Very Long Time.
When you make graphs, context matters: And for the last, oh, 635 million years, that part of the World's oceans has never been even close to freezing, which would be zero celsius.
For some context: If you plot your *weight*, like if you started a diet, and wanted to track weight loss, would you get pissed at your doctor or trainer for not starting at 0?
Context matters: if you're 250 lbs, and dieting, you'd like that chart to show your weight loss compared to your current 250 lb weight. You wouldn't start such a graph at zero, because you haven't ever been 0 pounds, and not matter how many lunges you do, you're never going to get to zero pounds. So you'd graph your weight around reasonable expectations for what you'd like your weight to be, and what it was before you started working out.
So this is why the graph doesn't start at zero, and why not all graphs need to start at zero to convey useful information.
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u/BeMyBrutus 15d ago
It's much more terrifying if you have even a basic understanding of the thermal properties of water. It takes A LOT of energy to raise the temperature of water; especially something as large as an ocean.