A scientist has compared the amount of heat that is causing the oceans to warm to the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb.
After analyzing data from 1950 to 2019, an international pool of scientists determined that the average temperature increase in the world's oceans in 2019 was 0.075 degrees. Higher than the 1981–2010 average.
It may seem like a small increase, but given the gigantic volume of our oceans, even small growth requires an amount of crazy heat. In this case, the scholars in the study calculate published yesterday in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences is 228 sextillions of Joules.
It is a difficult number to contextualise, which is why one of the scientists preferred to aid understanding by comparing it with a real reference. The comparison with the amount of energy released in the explosion of the atomic bomb dropped by the USA on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 can already give a better idea.
“The energy of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was approximately 63.000.000.000.000 Joules,” says Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “This means that the heat released into the oceans over the last 25 years is equivalent to that of 3,6 billion atomic bombs.”
It is a terrifying, unimaginable, in many ways unacceptable medium: it is as if every single second for 25 years 4 atomic bombs had exploded. What's worse is that the pace is increasing.
In 2019 alone, oceanic overheating was equivalent to that of 5 atomic bombs. Every second, every night and every day, all year round. A co-author declares it on the Vice site, John Abraham of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
And in case atomic bombs are still too abstract an entity to compare, 2019's growth rate could be achieved if every person on the planet constantly pointed a hundred hairdryers at the ocean, all the time.
Away from technicalities, it's a fucking huge amount of energy, and it is already having a gigantic impact on the environment.
The ice melts faster, the sea levels rise. Dolphins, other species, the coral reefs they are dying because they can't adapt as quickly. The increase in ocean temperatures increases evaporation, brings more violent and frequent hurricanes and typhoons, and more intense rainfall. The latest mega fires in California, Amazon e Australia they are tremendous signs.
