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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
The ‘blob’ is back — except this time it stretches across the
entire North Pacific
By Andrew Freedman, CNN
Updated:
7:00 AM EDT, Fri September 19, 2025
Source: CNN
A record-breaking and astonishingly expansive is underway in the
Pacific Ocean, stretching about 5,000 miles from the water around Japan
to the West Coast of the United States. The abnormally warm “blob”
of ocean water, which is getting a significant boost from human-caused
global warming, is affecting the weather on land and could have ripple
effects on marine life.
The hot ocean waters around Japan contributed to that country’s
hottest summer on record, which featured its , set on August 5, at
107.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
On the other side of the Pacific, the ocean heat is also yielding
higher humidity in northern California at the start of meteorological
fall, and if it persists, could enhance rain and mountain snowfall from
wintertime .
The sea surface temperature difference from average across the entire
North Pacific for the month of August, with reliable data stretching
back to the late 19th century.
What worries scientists is the repetitive nature of these events. As
climate change causes more heat to be stored in the oceans, ocean
temperatures are reaching new heights that could lead to more
significant impacts from these heat waves like this.
The North Pacific warmed at the fastest rate of any ocean basin on
Earth during the past decade, according to Michael McPhaden, a senior
scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
And the entire North Pacific Ocean Basin is involved in the current
marine heat wave, standing out starkly on weather maps. This event is
unique for its intensity and extraordinary geographic reach, and for
its potential to eventually alter large-scale weather patterns if it
continues.
If the broad ocean basin-wide heat wave persists, it could influence
the wintertime storm track associated with the jet stream, said Daniel
Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los
Angeles.
In parts of the North Pacific, from the Gulf of Alaska south to the
coast of California, this heat wave is known as a “blob” of
unusually hot water. It is part of a pattern of marine heat waves in
this area following a severe heating event in 2013 that lasted until
2016. That heat wave remains the most severe on record.
The moniker refers to how the area of warm water looks on maps showing
how different sea surface temperatures are from average. This year it
may be something of a misnomer, since the marine heat wave is so huge
that it spans the Pacific. It also originated in the Western Pacific
and gradually extended eastward.
Past Northeast Pacific Ocean blobs led to a in coastal Alaska, and
affected fish species along with sea lions and .
The seabirds, known as common murres, still have not recovered from
that marine heat wave, and impacts from the ongoing event have been
observed on other species, according to Heather Renner, supervisory
wildlife biologist at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
“There have been multiple die-offs of marine mammals, seabirds and
forage fish in Alaskan waters this summer; we have definitely had an
uptick in calls from the public about sick and dead birds,” she said
in an email. “These have all been much smaller than what was seen in
2015-2016 but have affected a wide variety of species.”
Renner says longer-lasting strong blob events tend to have greater
effects on wildlife, and the ongoing one has not been present nearly as
long as some past occurrences.
The current event ranks as the fourth-largest Northeast Pacific blob
yet observed, according to data from NOAA oceanographer Andrew Leising.
The 2013 to 2016 event featured warm waters that extended deep into the
upper layers of the ocean, which allowed it to persist through the
stormy winter months. This one, however, is more likely to prove
fleeting in the northeastern Pacific since it is more surface-based,
according to Art Miller, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography.
Once strong winds from late fall and early winter storms track across
the region, they will likely be able to stir up cooler water from below
the ocean surface, putting an end to this particular blob, Miller said.
“Since this is a summer anomaly, it is very likely confined to a very
thin mixed layer depth,” Miller said. “So once the atmospheric
conditions change, it should fade quickly into the ocean via vertical
mixing and through losing heat to the atmosphere.”
The cause of the ongoing marine heat wave — both the blob in the
northeast Pacific and the more enduring anomalies stretching westward
to Japan — are the result of “persistent anomalous wind
conditions” associated with stagnant high-and low-pressure areas,
Miller said. These can influence how much cooler ocean waters rise from
deeper depths, a process called upwelling.
This year, winds have been weaker than normal across the basin or blown
in directions that discourage upwelling. When upwelling is curtailed by
winds or other factors, surface water temperatures can soar. In recent
years, this has become more common in this region during the spring and
summer months, usually ending in the fall.
“There is concern that because these anomalies are happening with
similar (but not exactly the same) structures that the persistent
atmospheric pressure patterns might be part of an adjustment of the
Pacific Ocean climate state to global warming conditions driven by
greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning,” Scripps’ Miller said in
an email.
have that attribute an increase in marine heat waves and accelerated
warming in the North Pacific Ocean to global warming pollution from
burning fossil fuels. “The fingerprint of climate change is clearly
evident in what is transpiring now in the North Pacific,” McPhaden
said.
“The North Pacific has a fever, but the story doesn’t end there,”
he said. “The downstream effects of these marine heatwaves is likely
to be significant in terms of how they impact marine organisms,
ecosystem structure, fisheries and the weather in the Pacific
Northwest. Stay tuned.”
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