The warming Pacific and the el-Nino

This contains the worrying news that the el-Nino is not off the table but is expected in the next month.

North Pacific Warm Spot Worries Scientists.

Climate Crocks,

23 November, 2014

Oceans are the focus as warming seems to be in an accelerated phase, at least in terms of surface temperatures. Any claims about “slowdown” or “pause” no longer operative.

CBC:

​Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the warmth along the North Pacific coast is very unusual.

“We’ve never seen this before. It’s beyond anyone’s experience and this is why it’s puzzling,” he said.

Sea Surface Temperature anomaly of September 2014 from NOAA’s ERSST dataset.

To further complicate the picture, Peterson says an El Niño warm water ocean current should arrive in about a month.

“We’ll have what we call a double whammy,” he said. “It’s already very warm up north, up here. If we get an extra push of super warm water from the tropics, we could possibly have a big disaster on our hands, ecologically speaking.”.

Science Daily:

“The 2014 global ocean warming is mostly due to the North Pacific, which has warmed far beyond any recorded value and has shifted hurricane tracks, weakened trade winds, and produced coral bleaching in the Hawaiian Islands,” explains Timmermann.

He describes the events leading up to this upswing as follows: Sea-surface temperatures started to rise unusually quickly in the extratropical North Pacific already in January 2014. A few months later, in April and May, westerly winds pushed a huge amount of very warm water usually stored in the western Pacific along the equator to the eastern Pacific. This warm water has spread along the North American Pacific coast, releasing into the atmosphere enormous amounts of heat–heat that had been locked up in the Western tropical Pacific for nearly a decade.

“Record-breaking greenhouse gas concentrations and anomalously weak North Pacific summer trade winds, which usually cool the ocean surface, have contributed further to the rise in sea surface temperatures. The warm temperatures now extend in a wide swath from just north of Papua New Guinea to the Gulf of Alaska,” says Timmermann.

The current record-breaking temperatures indicate that the 14-year-long pause in ocean warming has come to an end

And, it’s not just the Pacific.

Climate Progress:

After an alarming report of a collapsed fishery cancelled the shrimp season in the Gulf of Maine last year due to higher water temperatures, it seemed unthinkable to locals that it would happen again.

“There are definitely still people that were holding out hope that we might be able to get in a bit of a season this year,” said Ben Martens, who runs the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association.

But that’s exactly what a team of scientific experts told the federal regulators who will make the call next week in a draft report, according to the AP. The scientists on the Northern Shrimp Technical Committee told the regulatory body known as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission that “the depleted condition of the resource” — meaning the shrimp population — can be blamed on “long term trends in environmental conditions.” And the culprit, according to the AP’s take on the draft report, is “rising ocean temperatures.”

Maine’s collapsing fisheries are on the bleeding edge of what climate change could look like in many places around the world. A study being conducted by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute has found the area’s oceans are warming up faster than 99 percent of the planet’s oceans,according to New Hampshire Public Radio. 

The institute’s Chief Scientific Officer, Andrew Pershing, said that “the trend we have in the Gulf Of Maine Right now over the last ten years, is about 8 times faster than that global rate.” Pershing pointed out the appearance of species that normally live in warmer, southern waters, like the Black Sea Bass and long fin squid, as signs of warming waters off Maine’s coast.

“The decline of the shrimp fishery, I think that’s another one that has a very strong finger-print of warming,” he added.

Maine’s Northern shrimp catch has declined sharply since it hit a high of around 12 million pounds in 2010, essentially bottoming out at 563,313 pounds in 2013. Regulators estimate that the total shrimp population dropped even more sharply — by a factor of 14.

Jeff Nichols, Communications Director for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said the 2013 moratorium was the right decision “given the overwhelming evidence of recruitment failure and stock collapse, and unfavorable environmental conditions.” There, because of the fishery’s collapse and “poor prospects for the near future,” scientists on the committee are recommending that the federal regulators vote on November 5th to close the fishery again this season. Nichols said the Commissioner would review the report from the Technical Committee, consult with DMR scientists, and attend the meeting.

Record North Pacific 

temperatures threatening 

B.C. marine species.

Scientists say new temperature pattern raising serious concerns

CBC,

21 November, 2014

The North Pacific Ocean is setting record high temperatures this year and raising concerns about the potential impact on cold water marine species along the B.C. coast, including salmon.Ocean surface temperatures around the world this year reached the highest temperature ever recorded, due in large part to the normally chilly North Pacific, which was three to four degrees above average — far beyond any recorded value.

Dr Richard Dewey with Ocean Networks Canada says scientists are still trying to figure out what's going on. (CBC)
​Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the warmth along the North Pacific coast is very unusual.

"We've never seen this before. It's beyond anyone's experience and this is why it's puzzling," he said.

To further complicate the picture, Peterson says an El Niño warm water ocean current should arrive in about a month.

"We'll have what we call a double whammy," he said. "It's already very warm up north, up here. If we get an extra push of super warm water from the tropics, we could possibly have a big disaster on our hands, ecologically speaking."

Invasive species on the rise

Richard Dewey, an associate director with the ocean observatory operator Ocean Networks Canada in Victoria, said scientists are still trying to figure out what's happening.

A Sunfish, normally found in temperate and tropical waters caught by fishermen off the Alaskan panhandle. (CBC)
Unusual and invasive species have already headed north including:

• Sunfish, normally found in tropical or temperate waters, which have been seen off the Alaska panhandle.
• Thresher sharks, which rarely travel past Vancouver.

There's also concern that Humboldt squid, which voraciously eat juvenile salmon, could make their way north again, after first being spotted off Alaska in 2005.

"So the worries with this is our local species having to work harder," Dewey said. "They're competing for the food they're after."