Weak winds in the Pacific drove record-breaking 2019 summertime marine heat wave.
Weakened wind patterns likely spurred the wave of extreme ocean heat that swept the North Pacific last summer, according to new research led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. The marine heat wave, named the “Blob 2.0” after 2013’s “Blob”, likely damaged marine ecosystems and hurt coastal fisheries. Waters off the U.S. West Coast were a record-breaking 4.5 degrees F (2.5 degrees C) above normal, the authors found.
“Most large marine heat waves have historically occurred in the winter,” said Dillon Amaya, a postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at CIRES and lead author on the new study out this week in Nature Communications. “This was the first summertime marine heat wave in the last five years—and it’s also the hottest: a record high ocean temperature for the last 40 years.”
And that wasn’t the only record: 2019 also saw the weakest North Pacific atmospheric circulation patterns in at least the last 40 years. "This was truly a 99th-percentile type of event, with impacts like slow winds felt around the North Pacific.” Amaya said.
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