The ocean off California keeps breaking heat records — 38 days so far this year. Experts warn it could produce a stormy summer that may threaten lives and devastate wildlife.
Max Darrow reports from San Francisco: just off the coast there is a serious marine heat wave stretching about 1,500 miles from Northern California to Mexico and well into the Pacific. Leading ocean scientists say it could last for months. Surfers are already noticing unusually warm water; in sunny San Diego one said he was ready to trade a wetsuit for trunks well before summer. Scientists say this has been going on since December, with temperatures 4 to 8 degrees higher than normal for this time of year.
Melissa Carter of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which manages a century‑long program logging daily coastal ocean temperatures, says the key question is how long it will last. A persistent high‑pressure system has kept deep, cool waters from upwelling, producing record‑breaking ocean temperatures.
The heat wave is already having impacts: dead birds washing ashore, likely starved by cascading declines in sea life from microorganisms to the fish they eat. Scientists fear kelp forests and whales could be at risk, and warn that algal blooms may produce toxins and deplete oxygen, potentially wiping out entire ecosystems.
Dan Rudnick uses autonomous ocean robots called gliders to measure temperatures farther offshore. There are also forecasts suggesting an El Niño could form; warm equatorial waters pushed northward in an El Niño year could prolong the marine heat wave. Warm ocean temperatures amplify hurricanes and atmospheric rivers, so if El Niño materializes, California could face some extreme weather events this summer.