Global ocean warming has broken records again! The latest data show that the temperatures in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Southern Ocean and North Pacific have reached record highs. On January 11, an international research team led by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and composed of 23 scientists from 14 scientific research institutions around the world released the first international report on global ocean warming in 2021 on the progress of atmospheric science. The report shows that the ocean warming continues in 2021, becoming the warmest year in the ocean since modern ocean observation records. Human activities lead to the increase of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, and the heat trapped in the climate system leads to the increase of ocean heat. The oceans store more than 90% of global warming heat. Compared with the surface temperature, the ocean temperature is less affected by natural fluctuations, so the change of ocean heat content has become one of the best indicators to judge whether the world is warming. The latest data from the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences show that compared with 2020, the heat absorbed by the upper 2000 meters of the global ocean in 2021 has increased by 14 × 1021 joules. "This heat is about 500 times that of China's annual power generation in 2020." Cheng Lijing, an associate researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explained. In each of the past 80 years, the ocean has been warmer than the previous decade. Ocean warming has caused a series of severe consequences, such as the rise of global sea level and the increase of extreme precipitation time. In addition, "the warm ocean pressurizes the weather system, producing stronger storms and typhoons / hurricanes, which will increase precipitation. At the same time, the warm ocean will also lead to a warmer and wetter atmosphere, thus promoting stronger rainfall and increasing the risk of floods." Cheng Lijing said that sea warming threatens marine ecosystems and human livelihoods, such as coral reefs and fisheries. The report shows that ocean warming is more intense in the Southern Ocean, the middle and low latitude Atlantic, the Northwest Pacific and other regions. In order to explore the reason, the researchers used the independent forcing experiment of the earth system model (cesm) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to reveal the contribution of different forcing factors to ocean warming. Experiments show that the increase of greenhouse gases is the main reason driving the spatial structure of ocean warming. In addition, industrial and biological aerosols and land use also have a certain impact on ocean warming. In addition, "the response of the ocean to the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases is relatively slow and lagging, and the effects of ocean warming caused by past carbon emissions will last for at least hundreds of years." Cheng Lijing said that this phenomenon highlights the important role of the ocean in global climate change. The research team pointed out that the impact of ocean warming needs to be fully integrated into climate risk assessment, climate impact and response. At the same time, this study also shows that there are still uncertainties and knowledge gaps in ocean warming monitoring, such as uncertainty quantification from interannual to multi-year interdecadal scale, the impact of data quality control, and regional differences in heat content revealed by different data sets. Therefore, "a better understanding and understanding of ocean dynamics is the basis for coping with climate change." Cheng Lijing stressed. The research team also released the 2021 ocean heat content data of two international institutions, respectively from the IAP / CAS ocean observation grid data of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the NCEI grid data from the National Oceanic Information Center (NOAA / NCEI) of the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Xinhua News Agency)