In the News: John Abraham on Minnesota’s Extreme Weather and the Impact of Ocean Temperatures

John Abraham, mechanical engineering professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering, recently spoke with the Minnesota Star Tribune about his latest ocean warming research and how rising temperatures across the globe led to the warmest winter and fall ever recorded in the state.

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From the story:

The excess energy from the heat in the oceans compared to 2023 would be enough to power the world’s economies until 2057. It’s enough to boil more than 2 billion Olympic-sized swimming pools, Abraham said. It’s the equivalent of setting off eight atomic bombs every second of every day for a year, he said. And 2023 was already a record year, with a heat content that was 15 zettajoules higher than it was in 2022.

That excess energy works its way into the atmosphere and supercharges weather systems around the world.

Ocean temperatures have been rising so consistently that Abraham believes records will likely continue to be broken in most years for the foreseeable future.

The only answer, he said, is to drastically cut the release of greenhouse gases.

The falling costs of renewable energy production over the last 20 years are encouraging, he said.

“It used to be that solar panels on a house was a statement of ethics, but now it’s really a statement of prudence,” he said. “I have solar panels, and now in the summer months I get a check from Xcel. When you drive down to Worthington and southern Minnesota there are wind turbines as far as you can see.”

It’s the economics that give him hope, Abraham said.