Ocean Temperature
Warmer oceans put coastal communities at risk, increase infrastructure costs, endanger polar creatures and threaten coral reefs and fisheries. Perhaps most alarmingly, rising ocean temperatures accelerate the overall warming trend.
For details on the wide-ranging and dangerous effects of warmer oceans, see the pages onSea Level, Sea Ice, Ocean Chemistry and Salt Water Species.
Not only are ocean surface waters getting warmer, but so is water 1,500 feet below the surface. These increases in temperature lie well outside the bounds of natural variation.
In fact, the ocean has absorbed so much heat about 20 times as much as the atmosphere over the past half-century that some models suggest that it is likely to warm the air another degree Fahrenheit (0.55° Celsius) worldwide over the coming decades.