JFC. That's a 6 day trend too. The graphs for 2023 and 2024 could be seriously scary looking to just about everyone. Not sure it'll be safe to rely on them as a picture of where we are up to ... but seeing drastic change over basically 12 months really hammers the message that things can get bad for usright now.
It's nothing to do with maritime fuels - it's because the sea absorbs a lot of the temperature from the air. This means the air temperature stays lower, but affects marine life.
It has happened as a direct result of climate change.
Ok, to summarise, more heat is going doesn't into the oceans because the pollution isn't reflecting it. Got it. But sea temperature rise as a whole is still due to global warming and absorption of heat by the oceans. If the additional heat is being absorbed more by the sea than it was, that's bad. But it's bad anyway.
I've said my piece, I'll leave it to those more knowledgeable to argue further.
I'd wager it's a combination of the cumulative effects of climate change and the first El Niño since 2015-16 developing following three consecutive years of below average ENSO temperatures. We'll probably see global average temperatures moderate a bit after this El Niño ends, and the current forecast is for it to subside by summer. But gods help us when the next El Niño comes around, and then the next, and then the next...
Also, if you look at the slope of the mean and standard deviation lines for the start of the year, this year is no different in that regard, so this very recent increase just seems more stark due to the unusual decrease that happened right before. It's just the starting was way higher than average. Well outside 2 standard deviations higher 😳