Hawaii’s Ocean is Hot, and Getting Hotter
All in all, 2023 was Earth’s hottest year in over 150 years. Surrounded by Ocean, Hawaii’s climate clock is running down to zero hour faster than many realize. As it was with ancient Hawaiians, Hawaii today is fully dependent upon and linked to the ocean which surrounds it.
For the past year, oceans around the world have been substantially warmer than usual. January 2024 was the hottest month on record in the world’s oceans, and temperatures have continued to rise since then.
The New York Times described the new climate findings earlier this week in very stark terms with a headline that read; “Scientists Are Freaking Out About Ocean Temperatures”.
For the past year, oceans around the world have been substantially warmer than usual. Last month was the hottest January on record in the world’s oceans, and temperatures have continued to rise since then. Each new year now is producing new global heating records.
New data from a variety of sources has led climate scientists to suggest that global warming is accelerating.
University of Miami, Brian McNoldy, an expert in hurricane formation, has been tracking the latest temperature data from the North Atlantic with a mixture of concern and bewilderment. McNoldy sums things up this way …“The North Atlantic has been record-breaking warm for a year now,”, “it’s just astonishing. It’s quite scary, partly because I’m not hearing any scientists that have a convincing explanation of why it is we’ve got such a departure. We’re used to having a fairly good handle on things. But the impression at the moment is that global heating has gone further and faster than we expected.”
Over the past year, worldwide average temperatures were more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than before the industrial age, and sea temperatures have kept on climbing in February, surpassing the daily records set last August.
The principal driver of all this warmth is no mystery to scientists: The burning of fossil fuels, global deforestation, and other human activities are driving temperatures steadily upward. The current El Niño weather cycle is also allowing more ocean heat to be released into the atmosphere.
More than 680 million people, nearly 10 percent of the global population, live in low-lying coastal zones. Bearing the brunt of climate-driven ocean extremes, some highly vulnerable communities in low-lying areas, including small Pacific island chains, are 15 times more likely to be killed by floods and storms, compared to other regions with lower climate vulnerability.
A well-established link between rising ocean temperatures and an increasing imbalance between healthy marine environments is also well understood.
The ocean further generates 50 percent of the oxygen we need, absorbs 25 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, and captures 90 percent of the excess heat generated by these emissions. It is not just ‘the lungs of the planet’ but also its largest ‘carbon sink’ – a vital buffer against the impacts of climate change.
The ocean is also central to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and stabilizing the Earth’s climate. However, increasing greenhouse gas emissions have affected the health of the ocean – warming and acidifying seawater – causing detrimental changes to life underwater and on land, and reducing the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide and safeguard life on the planet.
Warmer oceans provide more fuel for hurricanes and atmospheric river storms and can disrupt marine life, and life on land. Hawaii’s policymakers and residents who ignore what’s happening around them and delay or procrastinate meaningful transition measures which prepare Hawaii for the new climate reality now underway, do so at their and everyone else’s peril.
The Climate Outlook for Hawaii and the Mid-Pacific
New data from a variety of sources has led some climate scientists to suggest that global warming is accelerating. It was the hottest January on record for the oceans, too, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The intensity of recent underwater heat waves prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in December to add three new levels to its system of ocean heat alerts to indicate where corals might be bleaching or dying.
It is already well established that Hawaii’s globally remote mid-Pacific location does not exempt the state from macro changes in climate, rising temperatures, and extreme weather events no underway. Changes in climate are further impacting Hawaii’s historic seasonal weather and temperature patterns, producing increasing extreme weather events, as the painful consequences of the recent Lahaina extreme wind storm and fire tragedy demonstrated to all of Hawaii’s residents.
For island states like Hawaii, sea level rise is inescapable. The global impacts of warming are compounded by El Niño events in the equatorial Pacific, increasingly fueling elevated sea surface temperatures and the corresponding consequences.
Ocean temperatures in the mid-Pacific have been rising steadily and significantly over the past 50 years, consistently rising, with an average rise of 0.14°F per decade from 1901 through 2020. Recent data shows that overall ocean temperatures have surpassed 70° Fahrenheit, reaching uncharted territory for modern records.
The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures has now led scientists to express serious concerns about the uncharted territory we are entering due to unprecedented levels of warming in oceans and air temperatures.
For Hawaii, rising ocean temperatures are already having profound impacts on:
- Marine ecosystems
- accelerated coral bleaching,
- changes in biodiversity, and
- disruptions to weather patterns, locally and globally, and
- agricultural impacts.
An El Niño pattern like the one currently observed in the Pacific is associated with warmer years for the planet, as well as a swath of effects on rainfall and temperatures in specific regions.
But as humans heat the planet, the effects that forecasters could once confidently expect El Niño to have on local temperatures are no longer predictable, said Michelle L’Heureux, a NOAA scientist who studies El Niño and its opposite phase, La Niña.
As rising temperatures drive rising sea levels, Hawaii and other island states find themselves on the front lines of changes now demanding a sea-change of climate adaptation measures in the form of local mitigation measures; environmental, structural, and social.
The Effects of Sea Level Rise in Hawaii
Sea level rise in Hawaii is primarily attributed to global warming and the resulting melting of ice caps, leading to the expansion of seawater and the inundation of coastal areas. The rise in sea level around Hawaii is accelerated by factors such as melting ice caps, increasing air and sea surface temperatures, an overall decline in rainfall, and decreased stream base flows.
The impacts of rising sea levels in Hawaii are already being felt and are projected to worsen significantly in the coming years, Hawaii can expect:
- Coastal Flooding: Increased frequency and reach of coastal floods affecting communities.
- Coastal Erosion: Loss of beaches with 13 miles already eroded, threatening 70% of beaches statewide.
- Inland Flooding: More frequent flooding further inland, affecting communities not just near the coast.
- High Tide Flooding: More frequent high tide flooding threatening cities, damaging infrastructure, roads, and overwhelming drainage systems.
- Cultural Impact: Affecting traditional practices like fishpond maintenance, salt cultivation, and nearshore fisheries gathering.
A 2050 forecast of rising sea levels, increasing droughts, and hot ocean temperatures in the waters surrounding Hawaii all point to a state presently unprepared for the growing threat to the state’s sustainability, economic viability, and livability.
In the last decade, the speed at which Hawaii’s sea level is rising has increased — rising by as much as 1 inch every 3 years. Around Hilo Bay, it took 17 years for the sea level to rise 6 inches. Scientists now forecast the same increase in sea level rise will occur in less than the next 12 years.
By the end of the century, Honolulu could experience a sea level rise between 1.3 feet and 5.8 feet, and depending rising and accumulated carbon emissions. Events may be moving faster than science as forward looking sea-level estimates are increasingly being challenged as “too conservative”. Only recently has science begun to fully understand and factor new data elements such as recently quantifiable and accelerating meltdown of antarctic glaciers and ice caps. It is increasingly likely that Hawaii overall will see 3 feet or more of sea level rise by the end of this century, with higher levels plausible.
Building resilience into Hawaii’s economic, social, and environmental ecosystems requires more than just focusing on the state’s coastal communities. Hawaii is dependent upon a healthy and predictable ocean. That would include adaptation measures that predict risks, vulnerabilities, and solutions – including early warning systems and sustainable nature-based solutions to help communities cope with changing coastlines and failing ecosystems now under climate stress.
Publisher’s note to our readers
Continuing to live in the past is a social, economic, and cultural failure of state policy towards a meaningful climate threat response. This failure can be measured in varying degrees, but the indisputable conclusion is we are failing ourselves, our families, and placing added risks on the current and future generations of Hawaii’s residents – it is our carpe diem climate moment.
The Utility’s request for energy conservation was prompted by the failure of more than one of its large (so-called firm energy) combustion power plants. Two other combustion power plants were also shut for maintenance demonstrating the fragile of house of cards of the state’s energy grid. It was also what became the perfect storm in a chain of gird operating events concluding in a power supply emergency, and forcing the utility into a series of rolling customer power blackouts in an effort to prevent a system-wide power failure.
HELCO’s remaining combustion power plants on which the utility relies, were either shut for repeated maintenance and repair cycles. In the case of the state’s only geothermal power plant, Puna Geothermal Venture on Hawaii Island, the plant has been operating at reduced power production capacity, and well below its power production commitment to HELCO, and in its reduced operating state unable to close the power gap. This has been a recurring theme for PGV operations since the 2018 eruption of Kilauea which fully disrupted geothermal operations for more than 2 years. It further demonstrates in this most recent power failure event PGV’s inability to perform as contracted, and supports what local critics of the plant have been saying all along … it is a community environmental hazard, expensive to operate, and unreliable in its capacity as a so-called firm power plant.
Altogether, the solar plant propped-up the utility’s combustion plant-generated power shortfalls and a system wide service outage. Solar energy+storage at utility scale, coupled to customer sited distributed rooftop solar assets prevented a bad power situation from getting much worse. Extra credit was due island residents who curtailed their power consumption during the grid operating shortfall. Hawaiian Electric and ratepayers were lucky in contrast to what could have easily been a much worse and extended loss of service across the entire Island, and a greater service outage impact on residents and the economy.
In a comparison of costs between solar and wind power vs. combustion power plants, solar and wind power installations can further credit their overall lower lifetime operating costs to their base fuels; 
Granted, there may never come a day when every qualified building rooftop in Hawaii will have solar installed and on-site batteries providing energy management security and efficiencies without the need for a centralized power monopoly. However, Hawaii’s abundant natural and non-polluting solar and wind energy sources (when appropriately applied) are by far proven to be the most cost and energy efficient options available today.
A warning heard loud & clear
A corresponding climate-sustainability message all presenters seem to agree on was the need for an urgent and statewide transition (one superseding old assumptions), and that time is not on our side when it comes to preparing for the inevitability climate changes. And, how Hawaii is ill-equipped to address a rapidly changing climate increasingly measured in lost opportunity, and rising economic and social costs.
There are many wonderful and unique things about living in Hawaii, but personal transportation and vehicle ownership does not generally come to mind as one of them.
The Idaho National Laboratory and other studies have determined today’s electric vehicles have an energy efficiency range of 3-to-4 miles range per each kWh consumed which translates into about 3.3 cents per mile travelled when electricity costs 10 cents per kWh. For Hawaii, HE utility Electric rates range from a low of 36 cents to 53 cents per KWh. The statewide average for all HE rate groups nears $0.50 per KWh, and when applied to the annual cost for home EV charging from utility-supplied power is still a bargain compared to gas-diesel powered vehicle fuel costs.
The new vehicle is code name the Model 2 by the media. It is expected to incorporate the economic, manufacturing, technology lessons and growth of Tesla’s recent past and which will guide the vehicle’s development and accelerate its time-to-market. The Model 2’s low entry price is targeted at $25,000, with little compromise anticipated in vehicle utility, performance, and range compared with Tesla’s current line of luxury models.
In 1921, Congress passed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which placed 200,000 acres of land that belonged to the Hawaiian Kingdom into a trust. Anyone 18 years or older with at least 50% Native Hawaiian lineage would be eligible to obtain a 99-year land lease for $1 a year. (The leases, which are still available, can be extended by another 100 years.)
Another problem, experts say, is that the program has veered away from its goal of affordable home ownership. Residential homestead awards take several forms, including rent-to-own properties and vacant lots on which families can build their own homes. But the most sought-after option among homesteaders is buying prebuilt single-family homes on trust lands. While these turnkey houses cost about half the price of comparable homes elsewhere on the islands, they’re still prohibitively expensive for working-class families.
Yes, extinction is a strong word until one takes the time to review the in-depth scientific findings of human-induced planet-warming. The results of the science are conclusive; a global heating effect is modifying the climate and ny extension, weather predictability (historic in human terms) and stability, impacting both traditional seasons and weather. This growing body of scientific evidence points to climate-conclusive changes now underway and their projected outcome.
But, this year’s climate summit has also came at a time when 2023 has proven to be 
Rising P&C insurance costs are directly linked to housing (and the real estate market in total). Rising insurance costs, and the question of future property insurance costs, and even availability, is just one more example tied to costs of global heating and increasing cost of living factors, which translates into rising insurance costs added into their rent or mortgage payments, into food costs, and into their health costs. Altogether, failure to see the bigger and impactful picture of an economy based on fossil fuels, and continuing to live with fossil fuels wold’s primary energy source.
A Fifth National Climate Assessment report issued today by the US government describes how intensifying climate change is disrupting lives and businesses nationwide, even as communities in every state ramp up their response to the crisis: 
Minor and moderate coastal flooding is also on the rise along most Atlantic and Gulf coastlines, while a combination of rising seas and flooding from high tides and big storms is projected for the the mid-pacific and Hawaiian island chain. Meanwhile, warmer winters are contributing to declining snowpack levels in the Northwest, affecting water supplies.
The more warming there is, the worse the impacts will be. Science can’t tell us exactly how hot the planet will get because that depends on what we — society as a whole but especially our political leaders — decide to do. In the US, and elsewhere in the world, people have a choice right now to do more to cut their carbon footprint and prevent much worse warming.
Global sea surface temperatures broke new record highs, and Antarctic sea ice continues its unprecedented meltdown.
It’s real. It’s happening. It’s accelerating. And it’s our fault. Human activity — particularly the production of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuel emissions — it is reshaping our planet, and Hawaii will not escape the effects of rapid environmental change now occurring at rates never seen before, certainly since humans walked the Earth.
The Heat Will Kill You First (2023) warns that extreme heatwaves are becoming more common and are dramatically altering life as we know it – they’re an existential danger. Rising temperatures are already changing the planet, shortening seasons and intensifying disasters.