this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Pictured is a graph of historical global sea-surface temperatures across the year from 1982-2024. Yesterday was about 0.3°C warmer than last year. Well, maybe it will go back down since this is an El Niño year? :>

Average global surface air temperature in February 2024 was 1.77°C warmer than the average February from 1850-1900. So maybe we can retire those 1.5°C warming goals now?

However, the IPCC reports that global temperatures have only risen by 1.1°C. This is because they use decade-long averages. Indeed, it is completely possible that 2025 will be cooler than 2024, but crop failures don't care much for averages. shrug-outta-hecks And if global warming has accelerated, the IPCC's method will be a decade late to realizing it. Not that they can actually do anything about it...

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[–] blight@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago (10 children)

obviously this is warmer than usual, but i still have an unrelated stupid question: why isn't ocean temperature basically constant over a year? are they measuring a certain area more than others? seasons shouldn't affect this, so is the orbit doing something weird?

[–] impartial_fanboy@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

The eccentricity of Earth's orbit is pretty inconsequential. It's something like a 3% difference between the furthest and closest points, the changes in tilt relative to the sun or the kind of surface exposed to the sun make basically all of the difference.

The sun only heats the top layers of the ocean, like a couple hundred feet iirc, and unevenly at that. It would take a very very long time for all the water in the ocean to reach a true equilibrium (if the sun turned off tomorrow) but it doesn't get to because of the day/night cycle, the seasons, wind and the Earth's actual rotation etc. So that produces recurring ocean currents, which are chaotic in nature, thus leading to the ocean temperature to vary (drastically at times).

This newest warming though I think is largely an unintended consequence of the new bunker fuel regulations in 2020 that drastically reduced the amount of Sulfur in it. The sulfur dioxide produced from all those container ships actually has a cooling effect so really the planet was 'already' this warm, we were just countering it somewhat. It also is what is mainly responsible for acid rain so we can't just pump a bunch of it into the atmosphere.

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To add to this we don't really go "around" the sun, if my understanding is correct. We're essentially chasing it as it shoots through space dragging us all in its wake.

[–] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

"going around" is a fine enough description. It is true though that the solar system as a whole is orbiting around the galactic core.

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