Science

Cassiopeia

(2,603 posts) Fri Feb 19, 2016, 05:43 PM Feb 2016

The Blob is dead, scientists declare

http://earthsky.org/earth/warm-blob-is-dead-scientists-declare?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=09b1974ec2-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-09b1974ec2-394533365

By the end of January, 2016, a giant patch of remarkably warm water in the northeast Pacific off the U.S. west coast, nicknamed The Blob, appears to have dissipated. Its break-up is thanks in part to the strong El Niño in the equatorial Pacific, say scientists.

The so-called blob formed in response to an unusually strong and persistent ridge of atmospheric high pressure that emerged over the northeastern Pacific Ocean in the winter of 2013-14. The feature, which was so unrelenting that meteorologists took to calling it the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, weakened winds in the area enough that the normal wind-driven churning of the sea eased. Those winds usually promote upwelling, which brings deep, cool water up toward the surface; instead, the resilient ridge shut down the ocean circulation, leaving a large lens of unusually warm surface water in the northeastern Pacific.

Scientists and journalists took to calling the patch of warm water “The Blob.” Nicholas Bond, a University of Washington meteorologist and the Washington state’s climatologist, coined the term. Learn more about The Blob here.

At times, this patch of warm water seeped into the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, and the coastal waters off Washington, Oregon, and California. In fact, many parts of the northeastern Pacific experienced the greatest sea surface temperature anomalies in the historical record.