From the New York Times, I'm Catron Ben Holt. This is the daily.

Many of the effects of climate change are already with us, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, flooding,

but some of the most alarming consequences are hiding beneath the surface of the ocean.

Today, my colleagues David Gallus and Raymond

Jong on just how close we might be to a tipping point. It's Tuesday, May 7th.

David, you've been writing about different aspects of climate change for years, and are definitely no stranger to distressing news about a warming planet, but something about ocean temperatures seems particularly distressing.

What's going on?

Starting last year, scientists started noting something alarming happening in oceans

all around the world. It was warm in the oceans, but it

started to get really hot in ways that they had never seen before. And for the

last year plus I've been checking in with scientists and they are increasingly

concerned perplexed even with what they're seen and when you say oceans are getting hotter, can you just give me a sense of how much the oceans are

warming and how fast?

Well, if you look at a chart that shows, say say the last two or three decades of average sea surface temperatures,

you'll see a gradual warming trend.

But starting last March, we didn't see another gradual increase. We saw this big jump. And from March of

2023 on, it stayed hot and it's just getting hotter and we began 2024 at this much higher level than

we've ever seen before and we're still there and in many parts of the world the

temperatures are still going up as we head into summer.

And that has scientists really concerned.

And you said earlier that none of the scientists that you've been checking in with and

none of these very sophisticated climate models that they're operating with can explain this big jump.

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