Earth’s oceans are storing record amounts of heat!

Pandemic-related lockdowns may have spared Earth’s atmosphere some greenhouse gas emissions in these years, but the world continued to warm.

Measurements of water temperatures from around the world indicate that the total amount of heat stored in the upper part of the oceans in 2020 was higher than in any other year recorded since 1955, researchers report. Tracking ocean temperatures is important because warmer water melts more ice at the edges of Greenland and Antarctica, raising sea levels and overloading tropical storms.

The researchers estimated the total thermal energy stored in the upper 2,000 meters of Earth’s oceans using temperature data from tethered sensors, drifting probes called Argo floats, underwater robots, and other instruments. The team found that the upper ocean waters contained 234 sextillion, or 1,021 joules, more thermal energy in 2020 than the annual average from 1981 to 2010. Thermal energy storage has increased by about 20 sextillion joules since 2019, suggesting that in 2020, Earth’s oceans absorbed roughly enough heat to boil 1.3 billion kettles of water.

The researchers also analyzed ocean temperature data using a second, more conservative method to estimate total annual ocean heat and found that the jump from 2019 to 2020 could be as low as 1 sextillion joules—that’s still 65 million teapots. boiling. The other three warmest years on record for the world’s oceans were 2017, 2018 and 2019