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. 2022 Jan 11;39(3):373–385. doi: 10.1007/s00376-022-1461-3

Another Record: Ocean Warming Continues through 2021 despite La Niña Conditions

Lijing Cheng 1,2,✉, John Abraham 3, Kevin E Trenberth 4, John Fasullo 4, Tim Boyer 5, Michael E Mann 6, Jiang Zhu 1,2, Fan Wang 2,7, Ricardo Locarnini 5, Yuanlong Li 2,7, Bin Zhang 2,7, Zhetao Tan 1,2, Fujiang Yu 8, Liying Wan 8, Xingrong Chen 8, Xiangzhou Song 9, Yulong Liu 10, Franco Reseghetti 11, Simona Simoncelli 12, Viktor Gouretski 1, Gengxin Chen 13, Alexey Mishonov 5,14, Jim Reagan 5
PMCID: PMC8748534  PMID: 35035014

Abstract

The increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities traps heat within the climate system and increases ocean heat content (OHC). Here, we provide the first analysis of recent OHC changes through 2021 from two international groups. The world ocean, in 2021, was the hottest ever recorded by humans, and the 2021 annual OHC value is even higher than last year’s record value by 14 ± 11 ZJ (1 zetta J = 1021 J) using the IAP/CAS dataset and by 16 ± 10 ZJ using NCEI/NOAA dataset. The long-term ocean warming is larger in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans than in other regions and is mainly attributed, via climate model simulations, to an increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. The year-to-year variation of OHC is primarily tied to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In the seven maritime domains of the Indian, Tropical Atlantic, North Atlantic, Northwest Pacific, North Pacific, Southern oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea, robust warming is observed but with distinct inter-annual to decadal variability. Four out of seven domains showed record-high heat content in 2021. The anomalous global and regional ocean warming established in this study should be incorporated into climate risk assessments, adaptation, and mitigation.

Key words: La Niña, ocean heat, ocean warming, attribution, observation

Acknowledgements

The IAP/CAS analysis is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42122046, 42076202), Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB42040402), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42076202), National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0603202), and Key Deployment Project of Centre for Ocean Mega-Research of Science, CAS (Grant Nos. COMS2019Q01 and COMS2019Q07). NCAR is sponsored by the US National Science Foundation. The efforts of Dr. Fasullo in this work were supported by NASA Award 80NSSC17K0565, and by the Regional and Global Model Analysis (RGMA) component of the Earth and Environmental System Modeling Program of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Biological & Environmental Research (BER) via National Science Foundation IA 1844590. The efforts of Dr. Mishonov and Mr. Reagan were partially supported by NOAA (Grant NA14NES4320003 to CISESSMD at the University of Maryland). The IAP/CAS data are available at http://www.ocean.iap.ac.cn/ and https://msdc.qdio.ac.cn/. The NCEI/NOAA data are available at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/climate-data-records/global-ocean-heat-content. The historical XBT data along the MX04 line (Genova-Palermo) are available through SeaDataNet - Pan-European infrastructure (http://www.seadatanet.org) for ocean and marine data management. Since 2021, XBT data have been collected in the framework of the MACMAP project funded by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in agreement between INGV, ENEA, and GNV SpA shipping company that provides hospitality on their commercial vessels.

Footnotes

Article Highlights

• The world ocean, in 2021, was the hottest ever recorded by humans.

• The warming pattern is mainly attributed to increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, offset by the impact of aerosols.

• Ocean warming has far-reaching consequences and should be incorporated into climate risk assessments, adaptation, and mitigation.

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