"The study, which was published Friday in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science, found that the world's oceans absorbed an additional 23 zettajoules' worth of heat in 2025, the most in any year since modern measurements began in the 1960s. That's significantly higher than the 16 additional zettajoules they absorbed in 2024. The research comes from a team of more than 50 scientists across the United States, Europe, and China."
"His favorite is comparing the energy stored in the ocean to the energy of atomic bombs: The 2025 warming, he says, is the energetic equivalent to 12 Hiroshima bombs exploding in the ocean. (Some other calculations he's done include equating this number to the energy it would take to boil 2 billion Olympic swimming pools, or more than 200 times the electrical use of everyone on the planet.)"
Since 2018 researchers have calculated annual ocean heat uptake and found continual increases. In 2025 the oceans absorbed an additional 23 zettajoules of heat, the largest annual increase on record and higher than the roughly 16 zettajoules added in 2024. The analysis involved a team of more than 50 scientists across the United States, Europe, and China. A zettajoule equals one sextillion joules, and 23 zettajoules can be written as 23,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The 2025 energy gain is equated to about 12 Hiroshima bombs, boiling 2 billion Olympic pools, or over 200 times global electrical use. Oceans absorb more than 90 percent of excess planetary warming.
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