Researchers have been looking at sea sponges in places other than the Caribbean. This may have shown that Earth is getting warmer and can even tell us how much.
Over the last 300 years, the temperatures of sea sponges have been studied. This has just shown that Earth’s temperature has gone up by 1.5º Celsius and is still going up. Nature Climate Change put out a paper on Monday that said the temperature will rise by 2º Celsius by the end of the decade.
This is because there is less weather variation in the Caribbean than in other places where samples of these sea sponges were taken. The temperatures from these sponges show that the same temperatures were present from 1700 to 1790 and again from 1840 to 1860. Temperatures were said to have dropped during the gap, which was caused by volcanic activity.
Around the 1860s, people began doing things that warmed the temperature, and this warming has continued ever since. Because of this, there were clear signs by 1870 that temperatures were going up.
People use these sea sponges because the chemical changes can be stored in their calcium carbonate shells. This is a natural way to find out how warm the ocean is. The warming during the industrial age was thought to be 1.5oC, and this level has been said to have been reached. The ground warmed by 1.7oC, which could have happened any time between 2018 and 2022.
A professor of isotope geochemistry at the University of Western Australia named Malcolm McCulloch spoke out about the warming. He was the lead author of the study. He stated, “Since then, the increasing global mean surface temperatures, which means global warming, has been half a degree greater than the currently accepted estimates.”
