The Hidden Ocean Patch That Broke Climate Records

[n2doc]

BY DENNIS HOLLIER

Nothing has caused climate scientists quite as much recent trouble as the so-called “global warming hiatus.” Not only did this approximately 14-year lull in the rise of global mean (or average) temperatures provide fodder for a variety of misguided climate change deniers (there have been other, longer pauses), but it also represented a genuine scientific mystery. Scientists knew it was being caused by falling ocean temperatures, but they also knew that the ocean, as a whole, was warming. Where was the extra heat being stored, and when would it make itself known?

Then this past November Axel Timmermann, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center, announced that global mean temperatures had finally resumed their rise, driven mainly by an unprecedented spike in sea surface temperatures in the northeast Pacific.



This unexpected shot of heat showed up in late 2013 as a discrete orange blob in satellite imagery, and by the end of last summer, sea surface temperatures as far north as the Gulf of Alaska were the highest ever recorded. So too was the global mean temperature for 2014. While it will take more time to see if the record represents the beginning of a renewed warming trend, Timmermann makes no bones about it—he believes that the blob has ended the hiatus.

The story of the blob starts with an unlikely protagonist: a vast pool of warm water, thousands of kilometers wide and more than 100 meters deep, and thousands of miles away, stretching across the equatorial western Pacific. Although this warm pool was discovered decades ago, questions about its role in climate change remain unclear. How is it connected to last year’s temperature spike in the remote and frigid Gulf of Alaska? Was it primarily responsible for storing the planet’s excess heat during the hiatus? Why did the blob emerge when it did? As scientists piece together the answers to these questions, one lesson is emerging above all others: To understand climate change, we need to remember that the ocean has a very long memory.

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http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/the-hidden-ocean-patch-that-broke-climate-records

[Scootaloo]

1. Another example of what I was trying to tell another DU'er a little while back

"The ovean" is not one place. It's really tempting to think that it just sloshes around and mixes and does stuff like a bathtub or puddle, "only bigger," but... it doesn't. Being comprised of fluid doesn't actually keep oceans from being kind of static - there are geographical features in the water itself. currents, obviously, but things like this "blob," or concentrate saline patches, or what-have-you, are other features of the "waterscape." And they can be stable for a pretty long time!

The first few meters mix up pretty well, and so do current paths and coastlines. But you get out in the middle of the pacific, and there are "features" in the water that might be unchanged since the Big Island of Hawaii formed, if not longer.

Once you understand this, the notion of 'ocean dumping" (for example) is suddenly every bot as horrifying as dumping anywhere else.