"Weakened wind patterns likely spurred the wave of extreme ocean heat that swept the North Pacific last summer, according to new research funded by the National Science Foundation and led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The study was conducted at NSF's California Current Ecosystem Long-Term Ecological Research site.
The marine heat wave, named the "Blob 2.0" -- after 2013's "the blob," a large mass of relatively warm water in the Pacific -- 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.
"Most large marine heat waves have historically occurred in the winter," said Dillon Amaya, a researcher at CU Boulder and lead author of the study in Nature Communications. "This was the first summer marine heat wave in the last five years, and it's also the hottest -- a record high ocean temperature for the last 40 years.".."
Pacific marine heat wave
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