Topline:
Worldwide the average ocean temperatures have been in record-breaking territory for 15 months straight since last April. What's going on?
Why it matters: Abnormally hot ocean water helps fuel dangerous hurricanes. And when the water gets too hot, fish and other marine species also struggle to survive.
Why now: Climate change is broadly to blame, but there are other factors. Keep reading for four of the prime suspects.
The oceans are extremely warm right now. Worldwide, average ocean temperatures were in record-breaking territory for 15 months straight since last April.
That’s bad news on multiple fronts. Abnormally hot ocean water helps fuel dangerous hurricanes, like Hurricane Ernesto, which is expected to rapidly gain strength this week in the Atlantic, and like Hurricane Debby, which dumped massive amounts of rain along the East Coast of the U.S. last week. And when the water gets too hot, fish and other marine species also struggle to survive. For example, the ocean water near Florida is so warm that it’s threatening coral reefs.
So, why are the oceans so hot right now?
Let’s start with what we know: Climate change is broadly to blame. Humans continue to burn fossil fuels that release heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere, and most of that extra heat is absorbed by the oceans. Ocean temperatures have been steadily rising for decades.
The cyclic climate pattern El Niño is also partly to blame. When El Niño is happening, there’s warmer water in part of the Pacific, and that generally means the Earth is slightly warmer overall. In 2023 and the first part of 2024, El Niño was happening and it caused global average temperatures to rise, including in the oceans.
“The two primary things are obviously global warming and El Niño,” says Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M. But that’s where the certainty ends, because the oceans are even warmer than scientists expected from those two trends.
“Think of it like, the house was burglarized, and you have video of those two suspects doing it. And the question is: Is there somebody else helping them?” Dessler explains.
It seems like there probably was another suspect. And over the last 18 months or so, a few major theories have emerged about what it might be. Testing those theories is slow, laborious work for scientists, but after months of crunching the numbers, some early answers are emerging.
One reason that ocean temperatures started to spike last year is that ships stopped releasing so much pollution into the air.
In 2020, new international shipping regulations went into effect that required ships to use slightly cleaner types of fuel. The new fuel still releases planet-warming gasses like carbon dioxide, but it releases a lot less pollution into the air.
That’s good news for the overall health of humans and other animals – air pollution, particularly the sulfur-heavy pollution released by dirty shipping fuel, leads to serious illness. “This saves lives,” says Stephen Smith, an expert on air pollution and climate change at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
But all that pollution was also reflecting some of the sun’s heat, because sulfur helps clouds form and those bright, white clouds reflect sunlight. When the extra sulfur from ship pollution went away, scientists wondered if more of the sun’s heat would be absorbed by the oceans.
Teasing apart how much of an effect cleaner air over the oceans might have on ocean temperatures is surprisingly difficult. That’s because there are still lots of unanswered questions about how air pollutants affect clouds, which in turn reflect sunlight. “It’s a complicated system and it’s going to take some time to sort that out, but people are trying to do that,” says Smith.
The most cutting-edge research in the field does suggest ocean temperatures may have increased slightly in some parts of the world as sulfur pollution from ships decreased. In major shipping lanes where pollution from ships decreased significantly since 2020, there are fewer so-called ship tracks – long, thin clouds that form with the help of sulfur pollution, and look kind of like plane contrails – according to a new study published this week.
Without those reflective ship track clouds, more of the Sun’s energy does, indeed, seem to be making it to the surface of the ocean, where it is absorbed, the study finds. “This could be contributing to the warm temperatures we’ve seen in the last couple years,” says Andrew Gettelman, a climate scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the authors of the forthcoming study.
The good news is that this type of warming, from cutting dangerous air pollution, isn’t caused by humans releasing new, additional greenhouse gas emissions. Humans already caused this warming, but weren’t feeling it because air pollution was protecting us.
When ocean temperatures started surprising scientists last year, one of the theories was that a massive volcanic eruption in 2022 might be partly to blame.
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption happened off the coast of the Pacific island of Tonga. An underwater volcano erupted, sending sulfur, ash and water vapor into the atmosphere.
Usually, volcanic eruptions temporarily cool the Earth slightly, because the sulfur and ash in the atmosphere spread around the world and reflect extra heat from the sun.
But because the Hunga-Tonga eruption happened underwater, it spewed a lot of water vapor into the atmosphere as well. Unlike ash, water vapor absorbs heat from the sun. “Water is a greenhouse gas,” Dessler explains.
A handful of scientists publicly wondered if all that water vapor might be trapping extra heat, and contributing to off-the-charts ocean temperatures.
Recent research suggests that the answer is “No.”
“I was very skeptical of the warming effect,” says Dessler, who is an expert on how water vapor in the stratosphere affects the Earth’s climate. He points out that, despite the size of the eruption, it changed the total amount of water in the atmosphere very little. But, to know for sure, he and scientists at NASA had to analyze reams of data from satellites and other sources.
In July, they published a study showing there was no evidence that the eruption led to overall warming. If anything, like past eruptions, it contributed to slight cooling. “The bottom line is that this had a very tiny impact on the climate,” says Dessler.
But other scientific analyses about the potential role of the eruption on global temperatures are still underway, says Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA who was not involved in the newly published study. “I’d caution against assuming that a single [research] paper will end up being the consensus,” he says.
Since the heat in the oceans originally comes from the sun, our local star is one place to look for answers about abnormal temperatures here on Earth.
The amount of energy coming from the sun changes a little bit over the course of an 11-year solar cycle. “As the sun’s output gets brighter and dimmer by about 0.1% over its 11-year cycle, the Earth’s global temperatures increase and then decrease by a little less than 0.1 degree [Celsius],” explains Gregory Kopp, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
But that tenth of a degree Celsius change doesn’t account for the abnormally hot ocean temperatures of the last couple years. “The sun isn’t causing the recent record-breaking sea-surface temperatures,” Kopp says. The ocean is simply too large to immediately heat up or cool down in response to changes in the sun. “The sea contains so much heat energy that it doesn’t respond on the relatively short solar-cycle timescales,” Kopp explains .
So, in the quest to understand current record-breaking ocean temperatures, the sun doesn’t offer any answers.
The upshot is that scientists don’t know for sure what’s driving ocean temperatures into record-breaking territory. In addition to climate change and El Niño, cleaner air seems to be playing a role.
The last possibility is what Dessler calls “weirdness.”
The Earth’s climate is incredibly complex, and there’s some natural variability in temperatures on short time scales like one or two years. A few extra tenths of a degree of heat in the Atlantic due to nothing more but natural variability could account for a couple of record-breaking years, when it’s layered on top of warming from climate change and El Niño.
“My guess is, in the end, it’s just going to be internal variability,” Dessler explains. “Like, something weird happened! Because the climate’s always doing something weird.”
Gettelman agrees that normal year-to-year temperature variability is an important factor.
“We're going to see the planet warm in fits and starts,” he explains. For example, there was a period in the 2010s when the Earth didn’t warm very much. “People were saying ‘Oh, global warming's over,’” remembers Gettelman. “It wasn't. It was just a transient thing, and we now may be recovering from that.”
The real concern for climate scientists isn’t so much what happens to temperatures in a given year or two, but whether the overall warming trend is accelerating. If the oceans don’t cool off somewhat in the coming months, that would suggest that the Earth is heating up very quickly.
“I think people are starting to get a little worried that we are warming at the high end of what [climate models predicted],” says Gettelman.
“We’ll see,” Dessler agrees. “The next few months will tell us if we’ve really broken the climate.”
Copyright 2024 NPR
Topline:
After California lawmakers passed a state housing law that allows taller apartment buildings near train lines, Los Angeles leaders are facing a tradeoff: If they want to delay full implementation of the law, they’ll have to choose some parts of the city to upzone.
The background: Mayor Karen Bass and a slim majority of the L.A. City Council expressed opposition to SB 79, but Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law last year. Starting July 1, the law is set to allow apartment buildings up to nine stories tall next to subway stations, as well as smaller buildings within a half mile of light rail and rapid bus stops.
The waiting option: L.A. leaders are now scrambling to pull a delay lever built into the law. The provision allows cities to put off implementation of some parts of the law until 2030, as long as they agree to allow more housing development in certain neighborhoods in the interim.
Read on… to learn how discussions to delay SB 79 are shaping up at city hall, and what deadlines elected leaders are facing.
After California lawmakers passed a state housing law that allows taller apartment buildings near train lines, Los Angeles leaders are facing a tradeoff: If they want to delay full implementation of the law, they’ll have to choose some parts of the city to upzone.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 79 into law last year. Starting July 1, the law is set to allow apartment buildings up to nine stories tall to be built next to subway stations and smaller buildings within a half-mile of light rail and rapid bus stops.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and a slim majority of the L.A. City Council had expressed opposition to SB 79, in keeping with the long-standing preference of many city leaders to leave untouched the three-quarters of L.A.’s residential land zoned for single-family homes.
Now, some L.A. leaders are scrambling to pull a delay lever that was built into SB 79. The provision allows cities to put off the law’s broadest effects until 2030, as long as they agree to allow more housing development in certain neighborhoods in the interim.
“If we don't do this, what happens is SB 79 goes into effect full-on,” said Bob Blumenfield, chair of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, during a meeting on Tuesday. “I really want to avoid that happening.”
The state law lets cities delay implementation in neighborhoods deemed to be “low resource,” in areas at high risk of fires or sea level rise or are designated as historically significant. Even with those carve-outs, some higher-income neighborhoods near train stops will still be subject to upzoning.
The city’s Planning Department produced a report last week laying out three different approaches for the City Council to delay SB 79. All of them involve local incentive programs that would allow developers to build apartment buildings in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family homes.
The first option would allow buildings up to four stories tall, while the second and third options would permit buildings up to eight stories.
During the committee meeting Tuesday, homeowners spoke against the changes the new law would bring and the city’s upzoning plans.
“Single-family neighborhoods are where families put down roots — they are the beating heart of Los Angeles and SB 79 runs a stake right through that heart,” said Shelley Wagers with the Beverly Grove Neighborhood Association. “We must use every tool to prevent irreversible harm and buy time.”
Advocates for increased housing development said they favored the report’s third option, which would allow mid-sized apartment buildings within a half-mile of existing train stops, as well as planned stations and rapid bus stops.
Scott Epstein, policy director for Abundant Housing L.A., said that approach “offers the best opportunity to meet our housing targets and ensure that neighborhoods rich in transit services and high-quality schools are doing their part.”
The Planning and Land Use Committee could not get a three-person majority to agree on the best path forward, so the decision will now go to the full City Council for further debate.
Blumenfield said his recommendation as committee chair was to allow mid-rise apartment buildings in many neighborhoods, but only near existing train stops, not planned stations or rapid bus stops. He also recommended more exemptions for certain historic preservation zones.
Nithya Raman, a committee member who is also running for L.A. Mayor, said she found the report’s recommendations difficult to follow. Passing a delayed implementation plan could stave off changes in some neighborhoods, but only for a while, she said.
“Eventually we will have to do something,” Raman said. “So the question is just what do we do now and what do we do later.”
But council members have little time to figure out which approach they prefer. City planners told the committee that in order to have a delay ordinance in place by July 1, the council would need to decide what direction to take by early March.
Topline:
A new lawsuit alleges L.A. County’s $2 million settlement payout to its CEO was an illegal gift of public funds and asks a judge to order it paid back. The August payout to Fesia Davenport was first revealed by LAist, months after it was approved and paid in secret by the county.
The allegation: The lawsuit, filed by attorney Alexander K. Robinson on behalf of county resident Ana Cristina Lee Escudero, alleges the payout is illegal because Davenport did not have a valid legal dispute with the county. It also claims county supervisors illegally used the litigation exemption to discuss and approve the settlement in closed session, despite a letter from Davenport informing supervisors she had “no intentions of litigating this matter.”
The response: A lawyer hired by the county, Mira Hashmall, called the lawsuit “baseless” in a statement. She previously said the settlement served a “legitimate public purpose" by avoiding potential litigation. Messages for comment on the lawsuit were not returned from Davenport, County Counsel Dawyn Harrison’s office or the five county supervisors’ offices.
What the CEO had alleged: Records show the CEO payout was in response to claims by Davenport that she was harmed by a ballot measure approved by voters in 2024 that will create an elected county chief executive job at the county after her employment contract expires. Her payment demands said she suffered “reputational harm, embarrassment and physical, emotional and mental distress” caused by the ballot measure. Davenport went on medical leave in October and has not yet returned.
The law: Under the state Constitution’s provision on illegal gifts of public funds, local government settlement payouts are illegal if they’re in response to allegations that completely lack legal merit, according to a court ruling describing how such cases have been decided. And a payout cannot exceed the agency’s “maximum exposure” from a claim, according to another appeals court ruling.
The backlash: Leaders of unions that represent most of the county government’s workers previously told LAist many of their members have been shocked and outraged to learn Davenport negotiated a $2 million payout to herself, after they say she told workers there was no money to give them raises.
Topline:
As federal immigration enforcement raids continue across Los Angeles, a broader demographic of people is stepping up to volunteer their time to monitor and document immigration raids in their neighborhoods, according to Ron Gochez, organizer with the rapid‑response network Unión del Barrio.
More details: While longtime Latino organizers have led the patrols, their numbers are growing thanks to the new volunteers who aren’t necessarily Latino. Unión del Barrio has outgrown their usual meeting space at the United Teachers union building in Koreatown, which used to draw a few dozen people.
Spike in volunteers: Other immigrant advocacy groups say they’re seeing a similar surge in support. Representatives at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center report a spike in volunteers, donations, and attendance at “Know Your Rights” workshops.
Read on... for more about the increase in volunteers.
This story was originally published by The LA Local on Feb. 25, 2026.
As federal immigration enforcement raids continue across Los Angeles, a broader demographic of people is stepping up to volunteer their time to monitor and document immigration raids in their neighborhoods, according to Ron Gochez, organizer with the rapid‑response network Unión del Barrio.
“We have senior citizen retirees showing up saying, ‘I’m an old white woman — how can I help?’ We have students from community colleges and universities. We have people who look like longtime activists and people who look like they’ve never done this before,” he said. “It’s solidarity being shown by Angelenos of all shapes, sizes, colors and ages.”
While longtime Latino organizers have led the patrols, their numbers are growing thanks to the new volunteers who aren’t necessarily Latino.
Unión del Barrio has outgrown their usual meeting space at the United Teachers union building in Koreatown, which used to draw a few dozen people.
Along with their patrols, the group supports families impacted by immigration raids and issues real-time alerts over social media.
In late January, the day after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, about 400 people showed up for a training session, Unión del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said.
“The very next day, we had 1,000 people on a Zoom training for educators — and we couldn’t have more because the Zoom limit was 1,000,” Gochez said.
Organizers in Pasadena expected a few dozen volunteers at All Saints Episcopal Church and were surprised when nearly 800 showed up for the training session, according to Pasadena Now.
For the first time, the majority of volunteers at a recent training session were white, Gochez said.
“I think the administration and ICE thought that by killing Alex (Pretti), that people would be scared and intimidated and would stop participating,” he said.
Instead, it has had the opposite effect.
Other immigrant advocacy groups say they’re seeing a similar surge in support. Representatives at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center report a spike in volunteers, donations, and attendance at “Know Your Rights” workshops.
The legal advocacy group says they’re going to continue sustaining deportation defense, managed information hotlines, and expect that engagement to remain strong as federal immigration enforcement intensifies.
Residents living near Koreatown and Pico Union have seen a sharp increase in immigration raids in recent months. Unión del Barrio volunteer, Oscar, who provided only his first name out of concerns over retaliation from the federal government, has seen firsthand the effects of the raids.
“This part of Los Angeles — Pico Union, K-town, MacArthur Park, Westlake — has been hit incredibly hard throughout the last year,” Oscar said, pointing to raids along the El Salvador Community Corridor in Pico Union. “They’ve gone up and down Pico multiple times.”
Westlake, a dense immigrant neighborhood predominantly made up of renters and noncitizen workers, has also been identified as one of the most vulnerable areas in L.A. to ICE raids, according to a county-sponsored study.
Oscar leads patrol training sessions, but before joining Union del Barrio, he patrolled his neighborhood with a friend to report on immigration enforcement. “It just didn’t feel like enough,” he said. “I wanted to be part of a space of dedicated organizers.”
Overall, he’s seen more people working together across racial and gender lines, with a common goal of protecting their communities, helping deliver groceries to impacted famlies, monitor their neighborhoods and feel like they have something to do in the face of the ongoing immigration raids.
“People are coming in angry, determined,” he said. “but ultimately I think people feel empowered during the training.”
Unión del Barrio has expanded beyond its usual territory in South Los Angeles and the group now patrols in Boyle Heights, Long Beach, the San Fernando Valley, Beverly Hills and Brentwood, Gochez said.
“We have eyes and ears everywhere,” Gochez said. “I’m very comfortable saying there are thousands of people patrolling in the greater L.A. area.”
Although the group rarely solicits donations, Gochez said they have seen an uptick in funding, which helps cover costs from patrolling and printing “Know Your Rights” flyers and other materials.
Despite the heightened attention, Unión del Barrio has not altered its training curriculum, making sure that volunteers are following the law, but also aware that their safety is not guaranteed when they head out to monitor the immigration raids.
Organizers strongly discourage undocumented individuals or those on probation or parole from participating in community patrols, instead encouraging them to contribute in other ways.
“We’re not trying to become martyrs,” Gochez said. “We don’t want to be arrested, beaten or killed. But there is risk involved.”
Topline:
The L.A. City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to make permanent a city pilot program that diverts police away from some mental health crisis calls.
The background: Since launching in 2024, clinicians with the city’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response pilot have handled more than 17,000 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. According to city reports, about 96% of those calls were resolved without police.
The response: “We can’t keep deploying armed officers to handle mental health crisis calls because the outcome is Angelenos paying with loss of life and millions of their tax dollars for legal settlements,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who co-authored the motion to enshrine the program, said at Tuesday’s meeting.
What’s next: The motion approved Tuesday also directs city officials to form a working group made up of the LAPD, the L.A. Fire Department and other agencies to address inefficiencies in the dispatch system.
Read on... for more on how the program is also helping the city's finances.
The L.A. City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to make permanent a city pilot program that diverts police away from some mental health crisis calls.
Since launching in 2024, clinicians with the city’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response have handled more than 17,000 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. According to city reports, about 96% of those calls were resolved without police.
“We can’t keep deploying armed officers to handle mental health crisis calls because the outcome is Angelenos paying with loss of life and millions of their tax dollars for legal settlements,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who co-authored the motion to enshrine the program, said at Tuesday’s meeting.
According to Hernandez, in 2023, more than a third of LAPD shootings involved someone experiencing a mental health crisis.
Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the data from city reports was "incontrovertible and unassailable," showing the program’s success at diverting police and fire first responders away from mental health crisis situations.
Council members said the move to make the unarmed model permanent was also a matter of fiscal responsibility. According to a news release from the offices of Hernandez and Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, on average it costs the city roughly $85 per hour to dispatch LAPD officers, while a response from a UMCR team costs roughly $35 per hour.
Last fall, progressive policy advocacy group LA Forward, convened a summit of local and state officials with the goal of making UMCR permanent and expanding it.
Godfrey Plata, deputy director of LA Forward, told LAist his group was “incredibly excited” to see the city make the pilot program permanent.
Plata said he sees enshrining the program as a first step in expanding the program citywide, which his group hopes to do by the 2028 Olympics.
In 2024, the city partnered with three nonprofit organizations — Exodus Recovery, Alcott Center and Penny Lane Centers — to provide teams of trained clinicians in service areas spread across L.A. The teams are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week within the Police Department’s Devonshire, Wilshire, Southeast, West LA, Olympic and West Valley divisions.
Crisis response workers are trained in de-escalation techniques, mental health, substance use, conflict resolution and more, according to a report on the program from the Office of City Administrative Officer. The teams don’t have the authority to order psychiatric holds for people in crisis, but they can work with them to find help locally, and spend more time on follow up than law enforcement can.
In its first year, Los Angeles’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response sent teams of unarmed clinicians to more than 6,700 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. Only about 4% were redirected to the LAPD. Average response times have been under 30 minutes.
Examples of these interactions include members of the teams taking food to a woman who was crying and hungry, working with a business owner to engage with someone sleeping in a parking lot and sitting with a family for nearly three hours to help resolve a conflict involving a relative.
The motion approved Tuesday also directs city officials to form a working group made up of the LAPD, the L.A. Fire Department and other agencies to address inefficiencies in the dispatch system. The goal of the working group will be to centralize unarmed crisis response dispatch and improve response times.
