Global warming has tripled the length of marine heat waves since 1940, modeling study finds
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To build their model showing what would have been, had global warming never occurred, over the period 1940 to 2023, the team used , which they then used to develop long-term trends of global sea surface temperature. They then used the model they had created to discover the changes in marine heat waves over the past eighty years.
Marine heat waves are where portions of the sea surface are warmer than normal for certain periods of time. They are of concern because warmer surface temperatures mean more evaporation, which generally means . Thus, the more heat waves there are, the more storms there are, which can cause problems for areas along coastlines-from hurricanes to flooding from heavy rains. The researchers note that marine heat waves can also damage sea grass meadows, causing problems for the creatures that live among them.
In their comparisons, the research team found that approximately half of the marine heat waves since 2000 would not have occurred without . They found that over the past several decades, heat waves have occurred more often, and have increased in intensity-they are now approximately 1°C warmer. They also found that there were just 15 days of extreme marine heat waves in the 1940s per year, while today, that figure has jumped to 50, and some areas, such as parts of the Indian Ocean, experience up to 80 of them every year.
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