![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI_262210317.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Pacific Ocean released heat into the atmosphere in 2023<\/p>\n
blickwinkel\/Alamy<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
An unusual \u201ctriple dip\u201d La Ni\u00f1a that suppressed ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean for three years running may have primed the planet for the dramatic surge in global heat experienced in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n While global temperatures had been expected to increase around this time, due in part to greenhouse gas emissions and warm surface waters in the Pacific, they weren\u2019t anticipated to peak until early 2024. As it was, record-breaking heat emerged from September 2023<\/a>, months ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n Julius Mex<\/a> at the University of Leipzig in Germany and his colleagues set out to explore what exactly happened in late 2023 to trigger the onset of this extraordinary heat. \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to explain is why the change in temperature in boreal fall was so extreme,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The team used datasets that combine historical weather observations with climate models to investigate circulation, temperature, cloud cover, radiation and precipitation in the Pacific during 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n They conclude that the background state of the Pacific, which unusually had been stuck in cooler La Ni\u00f1a conditions since 2020, was a key factor. That suppressed ocean heat and encouraged the development of low-lying clouds, helping to reflect more of the sun\u2019s radiation back into space.<\/p>\n When the El Ni\u00f1o weather pattern finally emerged in 2023, the swing from La Ni\u00f1a to El Ni\u00f1o was so dramatic that it produced unusual effects on air circulation and rainfall over the western Pacific Ocean, allowing the ocean to release even more heat than anticipated into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n In parallel, the shift to El Ni\u00f1o also triggered a sudden and dramatic fall in cloud coverage in the eastern Pacific, allowing Earth to absorb much more radiative heat. \u201cThis is something that can drive the annual temperature change,\u201d says Mex.<\/p>\n Karsten Haustein<\/a>, also at the University of Leipzig, wasn\u2019t involved in the work but says he broadly agrees with the analysis. \u201cIf you have a triple dip La Ni\u00f1a, then you are not allowing the ocean to release heat,\u201d he says. \u201cSo you build up heat deeper in the ocean basin, and eventually it has to come out.\u201d<\/p>\n Mex says the findings are in line with research published in recent months<\/a> suggesting the disappearance of ocean cloud cover<\/a> was a key driver of the rapid jump in temperatures beginning in 2023. \u201cI think it\u2019s a perfect fit,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Richard Allan<\/a> at the University of Reading in the UK says the work improves understanding of how cloud cover changed in the Pacific during 2022 and 2023. But he stresses that human-caused climate change, alongside cuts to planet-cooling aerosol pollution<\/a>, were also major factors in reducing ocean cloud cover and driving warming.<\/p>\n \u201cThe size of the global temperature rise in 2023 was only possible due to the rising overall heating of the planet caused by rising greenhouse gases, but also reducing and dimming clouds related to the warming and also declining aerosol particle pollution,\u201d says Allan.<\/p>\n Topics:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pacific Ocean released heat into the atmosphere in 2023 blickwinkel\/Alamy An unusual \u201ctriple dip\u201d La Ni\u00f1a that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":155559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,285,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-155558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115049473252377739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}