COLUMBIA, S.C. — If you head to the beach anytime soon the water is already pretty warm for this time of the year. This warm ocean water is not just off our coast but is also being seen across the globe.
“We’ve been seeing this gradual increase in ocean and atmospheric temperatures.”
Records are falling each day. For about the last month global ocean temperatures have been the warmest they have ever been since the 1970s. At the beginning of this month, global sea temperatures peaked at 69.9°F beating out 2016’s ocean heat.
Dr. Diane Bennett Fribance, a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at Coastal Carolina University says the ocean plays an important part in regulating our climate.
“The ocean is playing a very important role because the ocean has a very high heat content meaning it can absorb a lot of heat without changing temperature.”
The concern is that there has been a temperature change though, since 1990 global ocean temperatures have risen almost a full degree above average.
These warmer waters have already begun to impact our own coast here in South Carolina, warmer water expands which is part of the reason why sea levels have risen 8 inches since 1880.
“We have a ton of marshes along our coast, and marshes are very sensitive to that sea level rise, naturally those marshes would migrate inland over time but we’ve built up our coasts so there is nowhere for them to go.”
Looking forward, temperatures are already well above average just off our coast and with most of the globe facing above-average temperatures we could continue to break ocean temperature records for the weeks to come.