Ocean temperatures reached all-time high levels last year

Earth being ‘pushed beyond its limits’ as ocean temperatures reached all-time high 

Our home planet is struggling with a record energy imbalance, which is warming oceans to unprecedented levels, making weather more extreme and threatening health and food supplies, the World Meteorological Organization has warned. The UN body confirmed 2015 to 2025 were the hottest 11 years ever measured, but a still bleaker message was that the rising temperature experienced by humans on the surface was only 1% of the faster-accumulating heat in the wider Earth system. Air temperatures grab the headlines, but most of the planet’s extra heat ends up somewhere else, in the ocean. There, it can linger for decades, quietly shaping sea levels, weather extremes and marine ecosystems. State of the Climate report finds Earth’s energy has moved dangerously out of balance, with oceans absorbing vast majority of trapped heat. A new international analysis shows just how much energy the ocean is absorbing. In 2025, the world’s oceans stored more heat than in any year since modern measurements began, continuing a long-term rise which reflects how much the Earth system is still warming. Using multiple independent datasets and contributions from more than 50 scientists, the assessment estimates the ocean gained about 23 zettajoules of heat in 2025, an amount of energy comparable to decades of global human energy use. This hidden heat helps explain why seas keep rising, storms grow more intense, and climate impacts are becoming harder to ignore.

More than 90% of that excess is absorbed by the oceans, which experienced the highest heat content in history last year. The rate of ocean warming has more than doubled over the past two decades, compared with the average over the previous 45 years. Some parts of the ocean are warming faster than others, and that unevenness shapes weather patterns and marine impacts. In 2025, about 16 % of the global ocean area reached record-high heat content. About 33 % ranked among the top three warmest values in their local records. The hottest zones included the tropical and South Atlantic, the North Pacific and the Southern Ocean. The assessment also notes that ocean warming trends have been stronger since the 1990s than in earlier decades. In the upper 6,560 feet (2,000 meters), the heat increase has been steady for a while, with hints that the rate has ticked up slightly. The authors of the latest annual State of the Global Climate report say this highlights the increasing vulnerability of a planet that is moving ever further out of balance as a result of human activity. The burning of oil, gas, coal and forests releases heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, which are all at their highest level in at least 800,000 years. This disrupts the planet’s energy equilibrium. In a well-functioning system, the amount of radiation entering and leaving the Earth system is roughly similar. But a heat surplus has been accumulating since at least 1960 and has noticeably accelerated in recent years.

Sea-surface temperature in 2025 ranked as the third warmest year in the instrumental record, still about 0.9 °F (0.5 °C) above the 1981–2010 average. It was slightly lower than in 2023 and 2024, largely because the tropical Pacific shifted from El Niño toward La Niña. This doesn’t contradict the ocean heat record. Surface temperatures can dip a little as heat moves around vertically and geographically, while the total heat stored in the ocean keeps climbing. Surface warmth still matters because it drives evaporation. More evaporation means more moisture in the atmosphere, which can translate into heavier rainfall and stronger tropical cyclones when storms form. The report links warm seas to major disruptions in 2025, including widespread flooding across much of Southeast Asia, drought in the Middle East and flooding in Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. This is tracked for the first time in the new report, which shows the Earth’s energy imbalance increased by about 11 zettajoules a year between 2005 and 2025, which is equivalent to about 18 times total human energy use. Last year it was more than double that average. The ocean absorbs over 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases. This makes ocean heat content one of the most reliable ways to track long-term warming. It’s essentially the planet’s heat ledger. Air temperature can bounce around from year to year. El Niño can push it up. La Niña can pull it down. But the ocean’s heat content is less twitchy. When it rises, it signals the Earth system is still gaining heat overall.

This finding wasn’t based on one group’s numbers. The researchers combined three observational products from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Copernicus Marine Service, and NOAA/NCEI, along with an ocean reanalysis from CIGAR-RT, to cross-check the results. The observations all pointed the same way: 2025 hit the highest ocean heat content level on record. And it’s part of a streak, ocean has set a new record high in each of the last nine years. At present, humans and other life forms on the surface directly suffer only a small fraction of that energy backup because 91% is absorbed by oceans, 5% by the land, 1% warms the atmosphere and 3% melts ice at the poles and on high mountains. But even with only a tiny share of this extra energy, the world’s surface temperatures, which are the most commonly used measure of global heating, are climbing to alarming levels. Last year was the second- or third-hottest on record. World leaders say it is now inevitable the planet will, at least temporarily, breach the target of limiting heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels set by the Paris agreement. They say the dire consequences are already evident in faltering harvests, worsening dengue outbreaks and increasingly severe heat waves, forest fires and storms.

Extra ocean heat has a few big downstream effects. First, it raises sea level through thermal expansion. Warmer water takes up more space, so seas rise even without adding melt water from ice. Second, it can intensify extremes. A warmer ocean can feed heat and moisture into the atmosphere, strengthening heavy rain events and helping some storms pack more punch. It can also prolong heat waves by keeping the background climate warmer. “The state of the global climate is in a state of emergency. Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits. Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said the UN secretary-general, António Guterres. “Humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record. When history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.” The effect on the oceans is still not fully understood, but the impacts are expected to be still more profound and long-lasting. Sea levels are rising at an accelerating pace, and sea ice is at its third-lowest level ever. People are assembling a special collection on ocean heat content changes, including studies on regional patterns and mechanisms in places like the seas around China, the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The cover includes cartoon characters, a sad shrimp and a crab, suggested by the study’s corresponding author, Lijing Cheng. “The idea comes from the ‘shrimp soldiers and crab generals’ guarding the underwater palace in Journey to the West,” Cheng said. “We reimagined them not as mighty guardians, but as vulnerable creatures whose armor, their shells and scales, is under attack by ocean warming, acidification, and other ocean environmental changes.” It’s a small detail, but it captures the point. The ocean heat record isn’t just a graph. It’s pressure on ecosystems, pressure on coastlines, and fuel for the weather that hits people where they live.

The authors of the paper said more of the heat is moving into the depths, which is affecting circulation and locking in the consequences for thousands of years. Nearer the surface, heat waves and acidification are a growing problem for corals and other marine life, while the melting of ice is pushing up sea levels and weakening the planet’s ability to reflect solar radiation back into space, thus adding to the energy imbalance. The uncomfortable bottom line is straightforward: as long as the planet keeps accumulating heat, ocean heat content keeps rising. This means records will keep falling. There is no respite in sight. The Pacific is coming to the end of a La Niña phase, which is usually associated with cooler temperatures at the surface across much of the world. By the end of this year, forecasts suggest this could be replaced by an El Niño, which will bring more heating. “If we transition to El Niño we will see an increase in global temperature again and potentially to record levels,” said Dr John Kennedy.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Name

 

ALLAH Names

 

Discovery of 33,000 giant hydrogen halos around Galaxies 11 billion years ago

  Early universe was full of hydrogen as per Astronomers : It looks they've discovered it     

Astronomers have discovered tens of thousands of massive hydrogen gas halos surrounding ancient galaxies, offering new insights into the rapid growth of galaxies in the early universe. They have identified tens of thousands of massive hydrogen gas halos surrounding ancient galaxies, some as far back as 11.3 billion years ago. These halos, crucial to understanding galaxy formation, were largely unknown until the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) expanded their discovery by more than tenfold. This discovery could transform our understanding of the early universe, shedding light on the essential role hydrogen played in the rapid growth of galaxies during the Cosmic Noon period. An enormous halo of hydrogen gas found in Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) data and superimposed over its location as seen in deep imaging from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Present 11.3 billion years ago, this system glows from the combined light of many galaxies within it, with the brightest region represented in red. Using data from HETDEX, astronomers have increased the known number of these haloes by more than a factor of ten, from roughly 3,000 to over 33,000. 

The Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) has discovered tens of thousands of gigantic hydrogen gas halos, called "Lyman-alpha nebulae," surrounding galaxies 10 billion to 12 billion years ago. Known as Cosmic Noon, this is an epoch in the early universe when galaxies were growing their fastest. To spur this growth, they would have needed access to vast reservoirs of hydrogen gas, a key building block for stars. However, until recently, astronomers had only found a handful of these essential structures. The universe’s early days are still shrouded in mystery, but new findings from the HETDEX team are providing unprecedented insights into the cosmic landscape. What were once thought to be rare and extreme examples of hydrogen gas halos are now known to be much more common than previously thought. “We’ve been analyzing the same handful of objects for the past 20 or so years,” said Erin Mentuch Cooper, HETDEX data manager and lead author of the study. “HETDEX is letting us find many more of these halos and measure their shapes and sizes. It has really allowed us to create an amazing statistical catalog.” A new study has now increased the known number of hydrogen gas halos by a factor of 10: from roughly 3,000 to over 33,000. This confirms suspicions that they are not rare curiosities. The study also increases the range of known sizes, providing a more representative sample for astronomers to study as they continue to tease out the origin and evolution of the first galaxies.

This surge in discovery marks a new era in the study of the early universe, offering astronomers a more representative sample to work with as they explore the origins of galaxies and stars. Images  from Subaru/HSC-r band, and JWST filters F115W, F150W, F277W, and F444W reveal that multiple low-mass galaxies accompany the LAN. Hydrogen gas halos, also known as Lyman-alpha nebulae, have long been difficult to detect due to their faint glow. Unlike other cosmic objects, hydrogen doesn’t emit its own light. However, when it is near a highly energetic galaxy or a group of galaxies, ultraviolet radiation from the stars can cause the hydrogen gas to glow, making it visible to advanced instruments. Detecting these halos has historically been challenging, with astronomers only able to identify the brightest and most extreme examples. HETDEX team used a unique approach to scan a vast area of the sky, uncovering many more of these faint structures. With the power of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope and its ability to observe large portions of the sky, they have unveiled thousands of previously hidden hydrogen halos, offering a more complete picture of the early universe. Observations from HETDEX are starting to fill in this gap. Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, it is charting the position of over one million galaxies in its quest to understand dark energy.

"We've captured nearly half a petabyte of data on not only these galaxies but the regions in between," said Karl Gebhardt, HETDEX principal investigator, chair of The University of Texas at Austin's astronomy department, and co-author on the paper. "Our observations cover a region of the sky measuring over 2,000 full moons. The scope is enormous and unprecedented."  Hydrogen gas is notoriously hard to detect because it doesn't generate its own light. However, if it's near an object that's throwing off a lot of energy, say, a galaxy or group of galaxies full of UV-emitting stars, that energy can cause the hydrogen to glow. To detect this, you need to dedicate a lot of time to precise instruments, which are often in high demand. "The Hobby-Eberly Telescope is one of the largest in the world," added Dustin Davis, a postdoctoral fellow at UT Austin, a HETDEX scientist, and co-author on the study. "And the instrument HETDEX uses produces 100,000 spectra in each observation. So, we have huge amounts of data and there are all kinds of neat, fun, weird things waiting for us to find." While previous astronomical surveys have found some of these halos, their instruments were only able to pick up on the brightest, most extreme examples. And targeted observations of early galaxies are usually so zoomed in that they cut off all but the smallest halos. As a result, everything in between the little guys and the big honkers has remained elusive.

One of the driving forces behind this discovery is the sheer scale of data collected by HETDEX. The telescope’s unique capabilities have allowed the team to examine over one million galaxies, uncovering their surrounding hydrogen halos. The newly revealed halos measure from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of light years across. Some are as simple as a football-shaped cloud surrounding a single galaxy. Others are sprawling, irregular blobs containing multiple galaxies. "Those are the fun ones," said Mentuch Cooper. "They look like giant amoebas with tendrils extending into space." To find them, the team selected the 70,000 brightest of the over 1.6 million early galaxies which have been identified by HETDEX so far. With the help of supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, they looked to see how many of these showed evidence of a surrounding halo: a compact central region of hydrogen and a thinner cloud extending beyond it. Nearly half did. What's more, this fraction is likely an underestimate, explained Mentuch Cooper. "We suspect the faintest systems simply aren't bright enough to fully reveal how large they are."

HETDEX’s ability to capture 100,000 spectra in a single observation has made it a powerful tool for studying the universe at a depth never before possible. As the HETDEX team delved deeper into the data, they discovered that the newly identified hydrogen halos come in a variety of shapes and sizes. These cosmic “amoebas” represent the dynamic and diverse nature of the early universe. Their irregular shapes and vast sizes, some halos spanning hundreds of thousands of light years, offer a new way to study the evolution of galaxies and their surrounding environments. By analyzing these shapes, astronomers can begin to piece together the mechanisms that drove galaxy growth during the universe’s formative years. The team hopes their discovery will help others study the early universe: how its structures evolved, the distribution of matter, the movement of objects, and more. With 33,000 halos to study, the problem will no longer be where to find them, but which one to choose. "There are various models for galaxies in this epoch that largely work and seem to make sense, but there are gaps and holes," explained Davis. "Now we can focus in on individual halos and see at a greater detail the physics and mechanics of what's going on. And then we can fix or throw out the models and try again."

The discovery of over 33,000 hydrogen gas halos is not just a significant leap in numbers; it also provides new opportunities for scientific exploration. With such an expansive dataset, astronomers are no longer limited by a lack of sample size when testing theories of galaxy formation and evolution. The research team is excited to move beyond the limitations of previous models and explore the fine details of individual halos. By studying these hydrogen halos, astronomers will be able to refine their understanding of the distribution of matter in the early universe, how galaxies formed and evolved, and the role of hydrogen in cosmic growth. With such a rich catalog of data at their disposal, scientists are poised to make new breakthroughs in the coming years about the universe.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Name