NASA
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Using future projections from the latest generation Earth System Model, a recent study found that large parts of the world’s oceans continue to lose their memory year after year under global warming.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—A future projected study of the Earth System Model published in the journal Science Advances on May 6, 2022. The title, Global decline in ocean memory over the 21st century. The study found that most of the world’s oceans continue to lose ‘memory’ year after year under global warming.
Weather fluctuations are relatively fast in the atmosphere. However, the temperature of the oceans is changing slowly. The ocean seemed to show strong persistence using its “memory”. This means that tomorrow’s ocean temperatures will likely be very similar to today’s, with only minor changes. As a result, memory sea often used to predict ocean conditions.
However, there was a decrease sea memory as the collective response of climate models to human-caused warming. As the concentration of greenhouse gases continues to increase, the memory decline will become even more pronounced.
“We discovered this phenomenon by examining the similarity of sea surface temperatures from one year to the next as a simple metric for ocean memory,” said Hui Shi, lead author and researcher at the Farallon Institute in Petaluma, California. “It looks like the ocean is experiencing amnesia,” he added.
The ocean memory was found to be related to the thickness of the ocean’s topmost layer, known as the mixed layer. The deeper mixed layers have a greater heat content, which provides more thermal inertia which translates into memory. However, mixed layers in most oceans will become shallower in response to continued anthropogenic warming, resulting in a decline in ocean memory.
“Other processes, such as changes in ocean currents and changes in energy exchange between the atmosphere and oceans, also contribute to changes in ocean memory. However, the accumulation of mixed layer depths and the resulting memory decline occurs in all regions of the world, and this makes them an important factor to consider. for future climate predictions,” said Robert Jnglin Willsa research scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, co-author of the study.
Hui Shi et al. 2022
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Declining sea memory (blue) between now and the end of the 21st century.
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As ocean memory declines, thinning mixed layers were also found to increase random fluctuations in sea surface temperature. As a result, although the oceans will not become more variable from one year to the next in the future, most of the signals useful for prediction are diminished.
“Reduced ocean memory along with increased random fluctuations suggests intrinsic changes in the system and new challenges in prediction under warming,” said Fei-Fei Jina professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Hawai’i at the Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, as reported Tech Explorist.
The loss of ocean memory not only impacts the prediction of physical variables, it can also affect how we manage sensitive marine ecosystems.
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