Mention is often made how the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, pushes tropical waters north & even affects Arctic climates. Well……yeah! Was looking at recent Atlantic ocean temperatures at latitudes that are north of New York City, north of the southern half of Lake Michigan, & about the latitude of Eugene, Oregon. What is this Atlantic Ocean temperature? Ugh……80Fdeg………just incredible.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/03/21/ocean-temperatures-record-warm-climate/ Average ocean waters are at very high temperatures. Decades of rising average ocean temperatures never reached 21degC AND were considerably lower. Within the first months of 2023, average ocean temperatures porpoised high, popping to & over 21degC. Few waters north of the equator are even average, but vast waters are above average. The ocean west of Peru & Chile are way over average! The coolest below normal temperature waters are west of the west coast of the US. In the southern hemisphere, the largest average temperature waters surround Antarctica. Yet even there, a warm stream of waters flowing south along southeastern S.America, cross the Drake Passage waters to the West Antarctic peninsula. The “hot” waters submarine & melt the greatest amounts of deep ices of Antarctica & are raising havoc with Thwaites Glacier, which is the loosening plug holding back the largest glacier flow to the oceans of anywhere on Earth. Already Thwaites accounts for the largest ice melts in the southern hemisphere & potentially could increase numbers of times, for decades to millennia into the future.
Hi Litesong: It is going to get worse. https://www.accuweather.com/en/clim...manual&country_code=US&default_language=en-US Wayne
Yes, Wayne. You are totally correct. Some people may not know how severe sub-surface Antarctic ice melting is. As ice sheets grew in Antarctica, the weights of the ices started driving Antarctic lands downward. Some ices are near 3 miles thick. There are some Antarctic mountains that are 15,000+ feet tall, & yet, Antarctic ice sheets have or nearly covered these tall mountains. Closer to Antarctic coastlines, such deep ice sheets have piled on lands that initially were above sea level & driven those lands BELOW sea level. In the worst cases, lands have been driven 8000+ feet BELOW sea level. These strong, warm, sub-marine waters, have 8000 feet of ices to warm & melt. Much of western Antarctica is NOT land based, but presently are islands & sub-surface lands with ice sheets piled on top. Already in places, ices have melted such that the ices have lifted off the sub-marine land (grounding points). As on fjords of Greenland, Norway, western Canada, & South America, the waters become DEEPER than the initial grounding points near oceans AND as directions move into the interiors of land. These deep waters away from the oceans, provide even more opportunities for intruding warm waters to melt ices. Antarctic ice melting is just getting started & I’ve only talked about articles as temperatures are now. However, even warmer waters are in the future, just as your mentioned article articulates.
