July 31, 2023 — Scientists are running out of extreme adjectives to describe the state of the world’s oceans.
Global sea surface temperatures are spiking off the charts. The North Atlantic Ocean, in particular, has for months been engulfed in what scientists have said is an “unprecedented” marine heat wave. The Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean basin have also been unusually warm. The waters off the coast of Florida topped 100 degrees F multiple times this week — temperatures comparable to a hot tub.
What’s more, some scientists say the worst may be yet to come.
“We’re not even at the height of the summer,” said Svenja Ryan, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “Typically, the ocean continues to warm until September, so I think certainly we can expect this heat wave to last into the fall.”
This month, parts of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico were more than 5 degrees F warmer than normal. In recent days, a patch of the North Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada — a region normally kept relatively cool by the Labrador Current — was an astounding 9 degrees F warmer than usual, according to Frédéric Cyr, a research scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, a department of the Canadian government that oversees marine science and policy and manages the country’s fisheries.