"This not only poses a tremendous threat to biodiversity it can also push these marine ecosystems past a tipping point, after which they can no longer recover." "More frequent and extreme marine heatwaves are a serious burden for affected ecosystems, " warns Barkhordarian. Similar rapid ocean warming events are causing havoc on fisheries and ecosystems from the Atlantic to southern seas.īeyond their immediate impacts on wildlife, marine heatwaves can also contribute to severe droughts on nearby land. What's more, these marine heatwaves are by no means confined to the north Pacific. The mysterious sea star wasting syndrome also just happened to start nearby at the same time as the appearance of that first Blob. It also fueled massive toxic algal blooms that shut down fishing industries and may have contributed to a 75 percent decline in whale mother-calf encounters. The suffocating, hot blob of water that began in 2013 decimated marine life, killing more than 100 million Pacific cod, thousands of seabirds, and other animals not even accounted for. This strengthens the atmospheric high-pressure systems above the warm water pool during winters. The team also discovered a decline in low clouds – which usually have a cooling effect on the waters below – over this region during the cold season. Summer water temperatures now linger for 37 days longer than 20 years ago. "Discovery of the long-term warming pool will now provide us with crucial information on the likelihood of such extreme events in the future," says Universität Hamburg atmospheric scientist Armineh Barkhordarian.īarkhordarian and colleagues detected a persistent pool of warmed water in the Northeast Pacific with increased annual mean temperatures of around 0.4 ☌ per decade. Now, researchers have identified the systematic warming in the Pacific Ocean that fueled the Blob's rise, and their modeling confirms that – as previously suspected – it is not the result of natural climatic variation. Since then, the Blob has at least briefly reared its head twice, hinting at an underlying persistence to its cause.
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