More than 400 scientists from 58 countries on three continents determined in their annual planetary exam that the temperatures of the earth’s surfaces are rising to historic highs, greenhouse gases continue to climb, and when it comes to the oceans, warming is unstoppable.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American Meteorological Society’s State of the Climate 2014 annual report, published Thursday, delivers a grim assessment of trends that were already well-established.
“Even if we were to freeze greenhouse gases at current levels, the sea would actually continue to warm for centuries and millennia, and as they continue to warm and expand the sea levels will continue to rise,” Greg Johnson, an oceanographer for NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, told a conference call for reporters.
In 2014, ocean surface temperatures were the hottest they have been in the 135 years that records have been kept. The sea level also reached a record-setting high.
Correspondingly, tropical cyclones were well above average, with 91 recorded in 2014, far surpassing the average of 82 such storms a year between 1981 and 2010.