In 30 years of studying the oceans, Matthew England has learnt to understand their irregular yet constant rhythms — the cycles of wind, temperature and atmospheric changes that interact with the masses of water covering most of the Earth’s surface.
But what he has seen in the past 15 months has shocked him. Global sea surface temperatures have reached and stayed at record levels, fuelling heatwaves and melting sea ice. Temperatures in the north Atlantic waters he has been studying, including around the UK and Ireland, were described last year as “beyond extreme” by the EU’s Earth observation service.
“I was stressed by the amount of climate change, to see the pace of change, to see these marine heatwaves, the loss of sea ice,” says England, who is Scientia professor of ocean and climate dynamics at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The rate of warming went “beyond what you would typically see from steady global warming”.