Oceans Warming As If Five Atomic Bombs Were Dropped In Per Second
Let's take this one nice and easy. Are you sitting comfortably? Have you adjusted your chair for optimal lumbar support? Maybe grab a nice cup of hot chocolate. Toss some of those mini marshmallows in there, you deserve a treat. Feeling cozy? Good. Hold onto that, and try to remember that things will be alright when we tell you that the Earth's oceans are currently heating up at the same rate that they would if we dropped five nuclear bombs into them every second.
Take a sip of that hot chocky. It's good, right?
According to a study published in the February 2020 edition of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 2019 was a big year for warming up the oceans, with their temperatures reaching record highs. The piece also pointed out that waters are warming faster than ever, and that the five hottest years in recorded history were, coincidentally, the last five years.
A-bomb sea
Maybe grab a pillow to support your lower back. You've only got one lower back, you know, and there's nothing wrong with a little self care, especially when you're reading quotes like this one from Kenneth Trenberth, a senior researcher at the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research: "The upward trend is relentless, and so we can say with confidence that most of the warming is man-made climate change."
The lead author of the paper, Lijing Cheng of the International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that it would take 228 sextillion joules of heat to increase the oceans' temperatures to their current state, or roughly the same amount of heat generated by 3.6 billion atomic bomb explosions at the same intensity as the bombing of Hiroshima.
You know what else is warm? A nice grilled cheese. Maybe make yourself a nice grilled cheese.
John Abraham put that calculation into terms that are a little bit easier to digest. He said that "We are now at five to six Hiroshima bombs of heat each second." Continued rising temperatures will inevitably lead to stronger hurricanes, mass oceanic extinctions, and rising coastlines.
Everything's going to be fine, though. Now go watch Netflix.