Minnesota’s extreme weather year again fueled by record ocean temperatures

Another year of extreme weather and record-breaking warmth in Minnesota has scientists again pointing to the oceans as the source.

For the seventh straight year, the world’s oceans set a new heat record in 2024, according to a study published this month from an international team of scientists. That includes temperatures at the surface, which inched above the prior record set in 2023. And it includes all the heat stored in the water below 6,500 feet (2,000 meters), which soared past previous records.

The weather in the Upper Midwest typically travels in from the West Coast. So what happens in the Pacific Ocean is especially important to Minnesota, said John Abraham, a thermal science expert at the University of St. Thomas and one of the lead scientists of the study.

“That’s because the oceans transfer heat and humidity to the atmosphere, and heat and humidity are what create our weather and our extreme weather,” he said.

Minnesota’s climate in 2024 was one of extremes.

It began with thawed lakes and no snow across the state during the warmest January to February stretch in more than 130 years of recorded data, according to the Minnesota Climate Office. It continued with damaging floods during the deluges in June, which ended as the fifth rainiest month in recorded state history. It wrapped up with the warmest fall, September through November, the state has ever recorded.

Warming winters over the last decade have had a lasting impact on moose, ticks, deer and other wildlife. The lack of ice plus warmer water has increased the likelihood of algae blooms and fish kills in the state’s lakes.

Climate change and the rising weather extremes across the globe are really the story of warming oceans, Abraham said.

Carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases in the air keep heat from the sun from escaping to space, reflecting it back to the earth. A small part of that excess heat warms the air, he said. Another small portion melts polar ice and snow. The vast majority of it reflects into ocean water, steadily warming it.

The world’s oceans were about 1 degree Fahrenheit hotter in 2024 than they were over the 30-year average of 1981 to 2010.

It’s difficult to comprehend how much energy it took to raise the temperature of the world’s oceans that much.

Imagine a time you were frustrated watching a pot of water boil, Abraham said. But now picture that pot is 1.25 miles deep and spans 70% of the Earth’s surface.

It took 16 zettajoules of energy just to raise temperatures above what they were in 2023, which itself was a record year, the study found. A zettajoule is a single joule — one unit of energy — times 10 to the 21st power, or a joule with 21 zeros after it. The entire world uses about half of a zettajoule a year in its energy systems.

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.