Science Alert March 20, 2023
While surface marine heat waves can have dramatic impacts on marine ecosystems, extreme warming along the seafloor can also have significant biological outcomes. A team of researchers in the US (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, University of Colorado, National Center for Atmospheric Research) has developed a new model which shows that marine heatwaves can unfold deep underwater, too. The analysis focused on the west and east coasts of North America, using data spanning three decades, from 1993 to 2019, to produce simulations with a resolution of 8 kilometers or about 5 miles, fine enough to sketch out how hot spots overlay features of the seafloor. But in deeper parts of the continental shelf, bottom marine heatwaves can develop without any indication of warming at the surface. According to the researchers their findings underscore the importance of maintaining long-term ocean monitoring systems, developing new observational capabilities to alert marine resource managers to bottom warming conditions to help us better understand what has happened in the past, and with Earth’s oceans having now absorbed about 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming, marine heatwaves like the Blob are 20 times more likely to happen… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Bathymetry along the continental shelves of North America. Credit: Nature Communications volume 14, Article number: 1038 (2023)Â