Hurricane Patricia was a surprise. The eastern Pacific hurricane strengthened explosively before hitting the coast of Mexico, far exceeding projections of scientists who study such storms.
And while the storm’s strength dissipated quickly when it struck land, a question remained. What made it such a monster?
Explanations were all over the map, with theories that included climate change (or not), and El Niño.
But the answer is more complicated. The interplay of all the different kinds of warming going on in the Pacific at the moment can be difficult to sort out and, as with the recent hurricane, attributing a weather event to a single cause is unrealistic.
Gabriel Vecchi, head of the climate variations and predictability group at the geophysical fluid dynamics laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, N.J., likened the challenge to the board game Clue.
“There’s all these suspects, and we have them all in the room right now,” he said. “The key is to go and systematically figure out who was where and when, so we can exclude people or phenomena.” Extending the metaphor, he noted that criminal suspects could work together as accomplices, and there could be a character not yet known. And, as in all mysteries, “You can have a twist ending.”
At the moment, the world’s largest ocean is a troublesome place, creating storms and causing problems for people and marine life across the Pacific Rim and beyond. A partial list includes the strong El Niño system that has formed along the Equator, and another unusually persistent zone of warm water that has been sitting off the North American coast, wryly called “the Blob.”
And a longer-term cycle of heating and cooling known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation may be switching from a cooling phase to a warming phase. On top of all that is the grinding progress of climate change, caused by accumulation of greenhouse gases generated by human activity.
Each of these phenomena operates on a different time scale, but for now they appear to be synchronized, a little like the way the second hand, minute hand and hour hand line up at the stroke of midnight. And the collective effects could be very powerful.
Although they interact with one another, each of these warming events is being blamed for specific problems.
“The Blob” has been associated, among other effects, with the unusually dry and warm weather in the western United States. Out in the ocean, the nutrient-poor warmer waters of the Blob — about four degrees Fahrenheit higher than average — are disrupting the food web of marine life. Some species of fish are showing up where they are not expected, including tropical sunfish off the Alaska coast, and an unusual number of emaciated sea lion pups and Guadalupe fur seals are being found stranded on California shores.
The warm water has also been linked to unprecedented harmful algal blooms along the coasts that have rendered shellfish toxic and shut down shellfish fisheries in Washington, Oregon and California. “A single clam can have enough toxins to kill a person,” said Vera L. Trainer, the manager of the marine biotoxin program at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. Officials also ordered the largest closure of the state’s Dungeness crab fishing.
“It’s really worrisome,” Dr. Trainer added. “If this is a single event that then goes away and we can forget about it down the road, it’s O.K. If it’s a window into the future, it’s not a good future.”
Read more: The Pacific Ocean Becomes a Caldron
The Latest on: Pacific Ocean
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Pacific Ocean” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Pacific Ocean
- Sailing meets science in new Pacific data-gathering projecton May 8, 2024 at 7:51 pm
New Zealand Geographic and the Cawthron Institute have launched Citizens of the Sea, which aims to map the health and biodiversity of the Pacific at a larger scale than before. Evgeny Glazov of ...
- Chinese Warships Seen Heading for Pacificon May 8, 2024 at 6:18 am
Japan dispatched a navy patrol plane to monitor a pair of Chinese warships as they approached its territory en route to the Pacific Ocean, its Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. Ph ...
- 5 Active Hydrothermal Vents Discovered Deep in Eastern Pacific Ocean—What Does This Mean?on May 7, 2024 at 9:55 pm
Situated at a depth of 2,550 meters, these vents represent fascinating phenomena where scorching water erupts through the ocean floor.
- New active hydrothermal vents spotted 8366 feet beneath ocean surfaceon May 7, 2024 at 9:45 am
F ive new active hydrothermal vents in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean have been spotted on the seafloor deep at 2,550 meters (8366 feet, or 1.6 miles). These vents are locations from which ...
- NGA wants industry’s help monitoring illegal activity in Indo-Pacificon May 6, 2024 at 1:36 pm
Interested companies have until May 24 to submit responses, after which some will be selected for review by the Defense Innovation Unit.
- 5 Hydrothermal Vents Have Appeared in the Dark Heart of the Oceanon May 6, 2024 at 4:30 am
Expect intense heat on the floor of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Researchers have learned that a location responsible for over 75 percent of the world’s volcanic activity is more active than ...
- The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: The Floating Islands of Trash Three Times the Size of Franceon May 3, 2024 at 5:21 pm
As plastic waste continues to grow, so does the trash that's accumulating in the Pacific Ocean. Two huge floating islands of garbage are taking up hundreds of thousands of square miles of real ...
- EPA sues San Francisco for allegedly dumping billions of gallons of sewage into Pacific Ocean, bayon May 2, 2024 at 12:11 pm
According to a new lawsuit filed by the Environmental Protection Agency and California water officials, the releases have been happening since 2016.
- Scientists find five new hydrothermal vents in Pacific Oceanon May 1, 2024 at 10:20 am
The pace of discovery in the oceans leaped forward thanks to teamwork between a deep-sea robot and a human occupied submarine leading to the recent discovery of five new hydrothermal vents in the ...
via Bing News