This chart of ocean temperatures is concerning
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By Benji Jones
Feb 28, 2024
If you were to dip your toes into the middle of the North Atlantic — say, somewhere between South Carolina and Spain — the water would feel frigid. You definitely wouldn’t want to swim. It’s winter.
Yet that water would, in fact, be very warm, relatively speaking. Right now, the North Atlantic ocean is, on average, warmer than any other time on record, running about 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the average temperature over the last three decades.
To understand just how unusual this is, take a look at the chart below. The wave of squiggly lines represents the sea surface temperature, averaged across the North Atlantic, from 1981 to now; each squiggle is a different year.
The thick orangey-red line that runs the length of the chart and hovers above nearly all the others is from 2023. The North Atlantic started breaking heat temperature records in March of last year.
Even more alarming is the departure that the new, shorter line from 2024 represents. It’s far above the rest, indicating this extreme, anomalous increase has continued into this year.
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