Ocean Heat Waves By Global Warming

Where humans and oceans meet, climate change has devastating effects on buildings, nature, and animals.

Along the coasts, global warming and the waves manage to heat the oceans, raise sea levels. The impacts on the wind and the temperature of the oceans cause massive waves that can kill the people who inhabit the coasts and islands in the world.

Image 1: The ocean and its waves are susceptible to changes in the wind caused by global warming.

The nature of water allows it to store heat for longer than air, which means that the oceans can absorb up to 90% of the heat gained by the planet.

The crucial situation has to do, especially with ocean waves generated and driven by the wind that determines flooding and erosion. The heights of the waves have been increasing in the last decades. That is the reason that leads to the increase in the energy of the wind.

According to scientific projections, by 2050, the sea level will have risen so much that the homeland where 150 million people live could be permanently below the high tide line.

The more strong waves seem to appear in the southern hemisphere. Other impacts that waves cause include extreme events, erosion rates, land changes, floods, and infrastructure vulnerability, but they do not always involve changes in sea level.

The lives of millions of people who live in these areas are in danger. Native animals have to leave their homes or die in their habitats at the same time as plants. Especially if they are exclusive to islands, it complicates the situation since it can extinguish them.

Image 2: Hot air can generate thumping waves, a real threat to life on the coasts, especially in storms.

The air of the earth can increase its temperature fast. With global warming, this worsens exaggeratedly. Consequently, the air-sea interaction increases the change in sea temperatures, especially in waves.

When the wind travels the sea surface, drags a wave, or collides with the ocean, it facilitates the interaction of the air with the water, which causes the heating of the oceanic water, which retains the heat and distributes it throughout the ocean.

Rising ocean temperatures cause longer and more frequent marine heatwaves. It reflects the bleaching of corals, death or atrophy of marine life, and power supply for more powerful storms.

The things that science currently know about marine heatwaves are limited, as it happens on the ocean surface, the satellites can map temperature and track events in near real-time. But below the surface, various currents are unknown and complex.

Scientists explore the changes in the shoreline under medium and extreme wave conditions. Some studies indicate that coastal areas could enter the coastal environment between 7 and up to 50 meters.

Global warming has been a factor that affects the climate, oceans, air, and waves worldwide. All this can lead to complex catastrophes since the heat reaches the oceans and is distributed throughout the aqueous environment, interacts with the land and groundwater areas.

Image 3: Life under the water is affected by the heat exchange between the air and the ocean mediated by waves.

Heatwaves can travel thousands of kilometers across entire ocean basins. It is such a reason for global concern since the affected site is not necessarily the causative site. The exchange of gases between air and water is crucial for the warming of the oceans; this phenomenon occurs mainly with surface waves.

Heatwaves have marked effects on the food chain; animals, plants, and microorganisms in the ocean are usually sensitive to these changes in temperature. The characteristic of the heatwaves is causing warm water, causing a deficit in available nutrients, such as the growth of phytoplankton, an underwater organism.

Even fish populations, such as salmon, can be reduced in surprising ways. Also, cause bird deaths, mainly in sensitive areas to heat, such as the Gulf of Alaska. Marine heatwaves have also caused massive amounts of coral bleaching on reefs in all world oceans over the past few decades. And what is to come is expected to be even worse. It remains to expect that the measures taken are effective and prevent such a disaster.

References

• Reguero, B.G., Losada, I.J. & Méndez, F.J. A recent increase in global wave power as a consequence of oceanic warming. Nat Commun 10, 205 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-08066-0

• Semedo, Alvaro & Vettor, Roberto & Breivik, Oyvind & Sterl, Andreas & Reistad, Magnar & Lima, Daniela. (2014). The wind sea and swell waves climate in the Nordic seas. Ocean Dynamics. 65. 10.1007/s10236-014-0788-4. 

• Thomas Mortlock, Itxaso Odériz, Nobuhito Mori, Rodolfo Silva. The Conversation. Climate change is making ocean waves more powerful, threatening to erode many coastlines. June 8, 2021, 4.10pm EDT. Link https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-making-ocean-waves-more-powerful-threatening-to-erode-many-coastlines-160998

• Giuliana Viglione, Nature. Fevers are plaguing the oceans — and climate change is making them worse. Nature 593, 26-28 (2021). doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01142-4. Link https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-08066-0

• Rodríguez, Alejandra & Marcos, Marta & Álvarez-Ellacuria, Amaya & Orfila, Alejandro & Gomis Bosch, Damià. (2016). Changes in beach shoreline due to sea level rise and waves under climate change scenarios: application to the Balearic Islands (Western Mediterranean). Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discussions. 1-25. 10.5194/nhess-2016-361.