The Dire State of the Ocean’s Health: Rising Temperatures and the Urgent Need for Action

Despite a long and snowy winter: The temperature on the globe – and in the ocean – is steadily rising due to human activity and emissions.

– 2022 was the warmest year in the ocean that has ever been measured. The vast majority of years since the early 2000s have set new heat records, he says Ragnhild Bieltvedt SkeieCicero scholar, on Cicero’s klimakunnskap-dag in Oslo this week.

Bubble jacket around the world

Our planet is in crisis, but the situation in the ocean is even worse. Samset explains it as follows:

– We have pulled a bubble jacket on the ground. The same amount of solar radiation comes in as before, but the jacket retains the heat, and it has nowhere to go. It must therefore be stored somewhere, and ends up in the sea, says Bjørn H. SamsetCicero researcher and climate book author.

Without the ocean, the globe would have been even more in crisis: The ocean takes in 25 percent of the carbon dioxide and other gases that we humans and industry release. In addition, 90 percent of the heat from global warming goes into the sea.

– The sea accepts, and that also means that it does not leave here. So if we had managed to stabilize climate change, we would have already warmed the ocean, with all the consequences that this has. For a long, long time to come, says Samset.

Fish species disappeared

Scientists have been sounding the alarm about the “dire state of the ocean’s health” for decades. But now it is increasingly clear how much the sea is struggling.

– The ocean is under-researched and under-communicated. But that there will be more energy and heat in the sea from each year. It is perhaps the most dramatic of all climate changes. We just don’t notice it very well, because after all we live on land, says Samset, researcher at Cicero.

A number of the sea’s fish stocks and species have either disappeared or are struggling due to the increasingly warmer and more oxygen-poor sea.

– Just since 1970, more than a third of the amount of life in the sea has disappeared because of us. We have filled the sea with pollution and plastic, every day – and more and more, says Fredrik Myhre, head of oceans at WWF World Wide Fund for Nature.

An increased population and climate change mean that Fisheries Minister Bjørnar Skjæran and others are planning to get more food and energy from the sea in the future.

Here is the food of the future

– Many people want to use the sea for food production, fish production and the like, but everything is caused by warming, marine heat waves and marine acidification, which we don’t talk about much, says Samset and continues:

– But large temperature increases in the ocean lead to less oxygen and so-called dead zones. They are not dead, but large mammals cannot live where there is too little oxygen, says Samset.

Fish shortage

In one of the UN climate panel’s latest reports, they have a graph that shows how much less fish there will be in the ocean in the future, due to acidification and warming.

– It shows fish production in almost all the world’s coastal areas. In the future, it will be mostly red and brown, which means poorer fish diversity almost everywhere. Except for one place: Right along the coast of Northern Norway and around the Arctic Circle, says Samset.

The Norwegian authorities – and everyone who fishes in the world – are clear about precisely this.

– We were asked about climate migration instead, which is difficult to say anything about. But fishing boats migrate quickly and easily and they will zoom into our areas in the north, something the Norwegian authorities are also aware of, says Samset.

– Norway one of the worst in the class

Lucky Norway

He further refers to disaster films and books that show what is happening, for example with Manhattan under flood.

– But it almost happened during Hurricane Sandy in 2009. It’s not that we expect the sea level to be that high in the near future, but sea level rise combined with stronger storms means that we risk such flooding events which can be very destructive, says Samset.

If the world manages to stabilize climate change so that the world does not get warmer, the sea will still continue to rise.

– It rises by three to four millimeters a year. If the world gets even worse, sea level rise will accelerate and become even more powerful. Most people live by the sea, which is the most convenient place to live. This means that we have a great deal of infrastructure located in coastal areas, which must be moved, says Samset.

– Sea level rise means that our descendants will have to move away from the coast. Norway is a steep country and the uplift after the Ice Age makes us a lucky and special place in the world, but many other places will feel this much stronger and faster, says Samset and continues:

– You also have places with severe coastal erosion already. Like Alaska and the islands in the Pacific Ocean. In part of the climate report that I was involved in, we have a graph with sea level rise, until 2300. If some of the tipping points in the large ice massifs – Greenland and Antarctica – strike, we will get rapid sea level rise, he says.

Cities must be moved

Then the globe can experience several meters of sea level rise in fifty to a hundred years.

– We don’t think it will happen, it is a low probability, but we cannot completely exclude it. You have insurance on your house. Not because you think it’s going to burn, but just in case it does. It’s the same here: We must have a strategy if sea level rise comes very, very quickly, he says.

Then cities will be able to be flooded.

– Then cities and the infrastructure must be moved to another location. We still have time, but changes are coming. Therefore, it is extremely important to adapt the climate to the real conditions that we will experience 50 to 100 years from now, says Samset.

He emphasizes that nature tells us very clearly what is in yeast.

– There is hope in the fact that most countries in the world have set themselves a net zero goal and renewable energy is growing like that. But we still have a long way to go. CO2 emissions are still at a record high, and continue to be so with every passing year, he says, adding:

– The increase is smaller from year to year than it has been in the past. There is hope in that. We know what to do, but have to pull ourselves together and do more of it – and faster.