The ocean is getting hotter, and that’s not a good thing. Photo: Unsplash
The world’s oceans are heating up, and in July they hit their hottest-ever recorded temperatures largely due to the exceptionally strong El Niño event we’re currently seeing.
According to the EU’s climate monitoring services, the average sea temperature — outside of the polar regions — was 69.72F. That beats the previous record of 69.60F in 2023 by just a tad, but points to a worrisome trend that scientists have been shouting about for a long time now.
“Sea temperatures remained exceptionally high across much of the tropical Pacific, where El Niño conditions are developing and forecast to strengthen in the coming months,” wrote the BBC. “El Niño is a natural weather pattern in the Pacific that combined with human-driven global warming can cause temperature spikes and more extreme weather.”
The numbers tell a similar story in the Atlantic, where sea surface temperatures around Europe and in the western Mediterranean skyrocketed.
Our oceans aren’t just important because they have waves in them. They’re vital to the overall health of the planet and play a crucial role in regulating the climate. They absorb much of the heat generated by greenhouse gasses and produce around half of the oxygen we breathe, but warming oceans also mean sea level rise. As seawater warms, it expands, and according to the research, about a third of the recorded sea level rise on record can be directly attributed to warmer waters.
Those rapidly warming ocean conditions also serve as fuel for bigger and bigger storms, as well as adding to the prevalence of marine heatwaves, which wreak havoc on all manner of sea life. Coral reefs are experiencing longer bleaching events and kelp forests are dying every day.
The 2026 El Niño event is already in effect, and if the models are to be believed, things are only going to get worse.
