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The temperature of the oceans is very high, with important consequences for the rest of the environment.
Water at 19.7 degrees: acceptable for swimming, but too hot for the environment. At first glance, the temperature difference with the past seems minimal, + 0.26 degrees in this month of may compared to the average of the last 30 years. “You have to understand that the ocean has a lot of inertia, it’s very hard to heat it up. What may seem very small is a lot of energy”, confides Jean-Baptiste Sallée, oceanographer and climatologist at the CNRS. Global warming is obviously one of the causes of this rise in temperature.
“Tropical cyclones, thunderstorms”
The ocean acts as a sponge and has absorbed about 90% of the increase in heat caused by human activities. The consequences are serious for the climate. “We are making a lot of energy available. This energy is available for extreme phenomena, for example tropical cyclones, storms”, says David Faranda, climatologist at the CNRS. In addition, the sea ice is suffering from global warming: researchers estimate that the arctic could be deprived of sea ice in summer, starting in 2030. That is a decade ahead of IPCC projections.