Marine Heat Wave Hits Pacific

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the western coast of North America’s ocean is five degrees Fahrenheit hotter than prevailing after warming at a terrifically rapid rate.
It has been baptize the “north-east Pacific marine heat wave of 2019”.
Marine heat waves are defined as oceanic events in which the surface temperature of the water is warmer than 90% of past measurements for at least five days in a scud. Since scientists started tracking the phenomenon in 1981, reported by NOAA on Friday, that the current heat wave is the second – largest.
If the unusual tract does not misspend soon, it could become as detrimental as the so-called “blob” of warm water in the same area that, in 2014-2016, devise toxic algae blooms, killed sea lions and threatened whales by forcing them to scour closer to uphold.
Oceanographers started to discern something atypical back in June in a triangle-shaped mass of ocean inflate from Alaska to Hawaii to southern California. The direct cause of the heat is weak winds, though these circumstances do not usually endure for months at a time as they have done this year. Warm water has also falter from the previous extreme heat event.
Nate Mantua, a research scientist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, California, expressed that - “It went from a little bit warmer than average to about as warm as we’ve ever seen it, in just three months”.
The oceans have absorbed about 90% of glut heat linked to the climate crisis. Mantua said - “That’s played out over many decades now, and it’s a slow process compared with this event, which has happened in just three months”.
It is also not established if there have been major impacts on marine life, mostly because scientist have comparatively little supervising equipment in the 4m square miles of ocean affected. Oceanographers are starting to see profound effects in the circulation of some species, Mantua said, such as tuna that are hanging out closer to the coast to avoid the warmer waters.
The impact has mostly been limited to the upper 50 meters of the ocean.

By: Tripti Varun
Content: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/08/pacific-ocean-marine-heatwave-blog