Global Warming

World's Oceans Heat Up to Warmest on Record

A 13-year pause in the overall warming of the world’s ocean surface ended earlier this year with the average global mean sea surface temperature soaring to the warmest ever recorded.

“The 2014 global ocean warming is mostly due to the North Pacific, which has warmed far beyond any recorded value and has shifted hurricane tracks, weakened trade winds and produced coral bleaching in the Hawaiian Islands,” said climate scientist Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

He says sea-surface temperatures started to rise quickly in January across the North Pacific, followed by a surge of very warm water from the western Pacific to the eastern Pacific along the equator.

“Record-breaking greenhouse gas concentrations and anomalously weak North Pacific summer trade winds, which usually cool the ocean surface, have contributed further to the rise in sea surface temperatures,” says Timmermann.

“The warm temperatures now extend in a wide swath from just north of Papua New Guinea to the Gulf of Alaska,” he adds.