January 2026 started with remarkable weather, including record temperatures, dramatic high tides and news that oceans keep getting warmer.
During the first weekend of the new year, record-breaking water levels occurred at 31 tidal gauges across the nation, particularly along the Pacific Coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. When the full moon was closest to the Earth on Jan. 4, higher-than-normal tides flooded low-lying areas along the California coast, where heavy rains made the flooding worse in some locations.
A key factor driving some of the increasing weather extremes, including coastal flooding, is the world's warming oceans, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Mann was one of a group of 55 scientists around the world who co-authored an ocean warming study published Jan. 9 in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science.
"Both the warming of the oceans and the ocean surface are playing a role in the extreme weather that we continue to see, as warming oceans evaporate more moisture into the atmosphere, driving the record flooding we are seeing, the more intense and damaging hurricanes, and the melting ice, rising sea level and coastal inundation," Mann told USA TODAY.
