News this week that there is a rapid heating of the world’s oceans is cause for great concern, as there is the possibility that it could add to global warming.

Scientists have reported that this month the global sea surface hit a new record-high temperature and, according to these experts, it has never warmed this much, this quickly.

We are told by Mr Dillon Amaya of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that, by July, most forecast models agree that El Niño, said to be the climate system’s biggest player, will return for the first time in nearly four years.

Mr Amaya explained that during El Niño, a swath of ocean stretching 6,000 miles (about 10,000 kilometres) westward off the coast of Ecuador warms for months on end, typically by 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1 to 2 degrees Celsius).

“A few degrees may not seem like much, but in that part of the world it’s more than enough to completely reorganise wind, rainfall, and temperature patterns all over the planet,” he wrote in a piece published by The Conversation, an independent and non-profit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.

Noting that people, justifiably, tend to focus on El Niño’s impact on land, Mr Amaya, a climate scientist who studies the oceans, pointed out that warm water affects air currents that leave areas wetter or drier than usual.

“It can ramp up storms in some areas, like the southern United States, while tending to tamp down Atlantic hurricane activity,” he said.

That leads us to another concern of ours — the Atlantic Hurricane Season which will be upon us in just over a month.

A long-range forecast from researchers at Colorado State University tells us that the 2023 hurricane season could be slightly below average.

Using information collected through March and developed using four decades of past data, the researchers have predicted that the season will feature six hurricanes — two of them Category 3, 4, or 5 — and 13 named storms.

While ‘slightly below average’ may sound a bit better than the forecast of ‘very active season’ we have grown accustomed to in recent years, no one in this region should become complacent.

The 2022 hurricane season produced 14 named storms, eight of which became hurricanes, with winds of 119 km/h (74 mp/h) or greater, while two — Fiona and Ian — intensified to major hurricanes.

We already know that global warming has contributed to the intensity and frequency of weather events; therefore, the rise in global sea temperature should, as we said, place us on our guard.

Despite sustaining damaging brushes with a number of storms down the years, Jamaica has not felt the full force of a hurricane since September 1988 when Category 3 Gilbert tore through the entire island, leaving at least 45 people dead and more than US$4 billion in damage.

We hope and pray that we will be spared the impact of any and all hurricanes yet again. But it’s time now for us to prepare for the worst as best we can.