The world’s oceans this summer are the warmest on record.The National Climatic Data Center, the government agency that keeps weather records, says the average global ocean temperature in July was 62.6 degrees. That’s the hottest since record-keeping began in 1880. The previous record was set in 1998.It doesn't take misleading statements to get scared about the Arctic in particular:
Meteorologists blame a combination of a natural El Nino weather pattern on top of worsening manmade global warming.
It’s most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average.I recall from chemistry that water has a high specific heat and thus requires more energy to warm or cool. By that high-school logic, it would seem like water is the medium we should be watching... and thus we should be worried.
Update: I didn't read through the whole post at first, so now that I have, here is my point made by a weightier figure:
Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land. That’s because water takes longer to heat up and doesn’t cool off as easily, said climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
“This is another yet really important indicator of the change that’s occurring,” Weaver said.
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