This summer has seen the highest global mean surface temperatures ever recorded since systemic measurement began.
Between the years of 2000 and 2013 the global ocean surface temperate rise has been on paused despite a significant increase in in greenhouse gas concentrations, the University of Hawaii - SOEST reported. While this period has been referred to as the Global Warming Hiatus, but the temperatures have started rising again as of April 2014 according to the recent analysis.
The recent temperature changes were dramatic enough to beat the record-beating highs of the 1998 El Niño year.
"The 2014 global ocean warming is mostly due to the North Pacific, which has warmed far beyond any recorded value and has shifted hurricane tracks, weakened trade winds, and produced coral bleaching in the Hawaiian Islands," said Axel Timmermann, climate scientist and professor, studying variability of the global climate system at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Timmerman has observed that as of recent months ocean temperatures have started to rise in the North Pacific extratropical region. In April and May, westerly winds moved an unusual amount of warm water along the Eastern Pacific equator, which has now spread across the western Pacific along the eastern Pacific. These warm waters have moved down the Pacific coast and released heat into the atmosphere; this water has been stored in the Western tropical Pacific for at least 10 years.
"Record-breaking greenhouse gas concentrations and anomalously weak North Pacific summer trade winds, which usually cool the ocean surface, have contributed further to the rise in sea surface temperatures. The warm temperatures now extend in a wide swath from just north of Papua New Guinea to the Gulf of Alaska," Timmermann said.
The recent findings suggest the 14 year pause in ocean warming has finally broken and is on the incline again.
