THE PAST decade has seen the Atlantic Ocean see its hottest temperatures in almost three thousand years.
This is according to a new study that found recent spikes in temperature go well beyond what is expected from natural patterns.
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Rising oceans temperatures are bad news for a lot of marine life.
Hotter oceans also lead to worrying weather, including increasingly-severe hurricanes.
The Atlantic Ocean flows between the UK and the US and all the way down to Africa.
It’s the second largest ocean in the world.
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Scientists were able to track the Atlantic’s changing temperatures back to around 2,900 years ago.
They did this by looking at ice, thermometer data and sediment cores in the Canadian Arctic.
These cores date back thousands of years and visibly change according to temperature.
The sediments were able to show regular patterns of ocean temperature changes as well as a worrying increase in temperature in recent years.
Causes of ocean warming were not pinpointed in the study but climate change is thought to be responsible for warming temperatures all over the world.
The warming temperatures could lead to storms, mass extinction for many species and the study suggests the problem will only get worse.
The researchers were from the from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Quebec.
This study was been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Climate change explained
Here are the basic facts…
- Scientists have lots of evidence to show that the Earth’s climate is rapidly changing due to human activity
- Climate change will result in problems like global warming, greater risk of flooding, droughts and regular heatwaves
- Each of the last three decades have been hotter than the previous one and 17 of the 18 warmest years on record have happened during the 21st century
- The Earth only needs to increase by a few degrees for it to spell disaster
- The oceans are already warming, polar ice and glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and we’re seeing more extreme weather events
- In 2015, almost all of the world’s nations signed a deal called the Paris Agreement which set out ways in which they could tackle climate change and try to keep temperatures below 2C
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And, the Arctic “hasn’t been this warm for three million years”, according to scientists who have been studying CO2 emissions.
What are your thoughts on the heating Atlantic Ocean? Let us know in the comments…
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
