Global warming can’t explain this: Pacific Ocean temperatures are breaking records in baffling heatwave

Standing on the shore of the Pacific Ocean looking out across the water you would be hard pressed to see anything out of the ordinary. But researchers and scientists are monitoring a worrying situation.

Stretching from Kamchatka to California is a massive oceanic heatwave with water temperatures well above normal. The first time it was observed, ‘The Blob’ disrupted the food chain and altered weather patterns thousands of miles away.

What is the ‘The Blob’

The phenomenon first appeared in 2013 and was given the name ‘The Blob’ the following summer. Water temperatures shot up seven degrees above normal at its peak and it extended for over 1,000 miles and to a depth of 300 feet before breaking up into three separate blobs.

While this superheated water was present over the subsequent three years, colder, nutrient rich waters water from the ocean’s depths didn’t rise to the surface leading to a chain reaction in the food web. Plankton died off without the nutrients, reducing food for fish. That forced them to migrate to the shore, and their predators followed them.

This led to whales getting caught up in fishing lines. In 2016, there were 70 deaths of the large mammals as they searched for food close to shore. That year there was also a die-off in the sea lion population and the largest on record of the Common Murre, a bird that forages on cold-water fish.

The abnormally warm waters also aided in harmful algal blooms which affected the crab population, making them poisonous for human consumption, putting the fishing season on hold for months.

‘The Blob’ also helped pump large quantities of moisture into the atmosphere and changed the jet stream. This dislodged the polar vortex sending Arctic air plunging into the Midwest and East as well as delivering massive amounts of snow.

Meanwhile, the West Coast experienced warmer temperatures and a smaller snowpack that communities rely on for their fresh water and drought prevention in the spring.

What’s causing the North Pacific ‘Blob’?

Scientists aren’t exactly sure what is behind ‘The Blob’, but they have some ideas. One is that just like a heat dome over land, there is a high-pressure system that has lingered over the northern Pacific.

This limits the amount of wind blowing which leads to a lack of churning of the water that would normally result in upwelling of waters deep in the ocean basin. Without those colder waters rising and mixing with surface waters, temperatures keep heating up.

Another culprit that may be aiding in the surging temperatures could be ships using cleaner fuels and Chinese cities reducing the amount of pollution they emit.

It might seem counterintuitive, but the dirty engine fuels produce sulfur dioxide which used to get ejected into the atmosphere as they traveled across the North Pacific. The particles in that pollution acted as reflectors of sunlight. Pollution from Chinese cities acted similarly.

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, told the BBC that he sees this as “the primary candidate for what’s driving this warming in the region.”

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