Why are marine heatwaves on the rise?
Dr. Karina von Schuckmann, a renowned oceanographer and IPCC expert, points to Earth’s energy imbalance as the key driver behind our rapidly warming oceans.
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00:00The ocean can be seen as the sentinel for planetary warming.
00:10When we measure the ocean by taking all the measurements of temperature
00:14from the surface down to deeper layers,
00:16we can calculate the so-called ocean heat content.
00:21And we see globally that the ocean is warming.
00:24So it tells us that the Earth is out of energy balance.
00:27So that means we receive energy from the sun
00:31and normally this amount of energy after a certain time,
00:36there are a lot of interactions, evaporation, precipitation,
00:40reflection, absorption.
00:42But then this heat is leaving the system
00:45and normally we come to a quasi-equilibrium of energy.
00:50But because we have the greenhouse gases in the system,
00:53there is less energy leaving the system.
00:56And so we have an imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.
00:59So more is coming in and less is going out.
01:03And this leads to an accumulation of heat in the climate system.
01:08So this heat is taken up by the climate components.
01:12And the ocean is a big part.
01:14So it's about 90% of this surplus heat from global emissions
01:19is stored in the ocean.
01:21And that leads us to a warming ocean.
01:23But it tells us also that the Earth is out of energy balance.