The West Coast is in its second straight year of unusually warm water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. JPR looks at what makes this particular warming phenomenon so unique, and what consequences may be in store for the Northwest.
Bill Lydgate: “I’ve been surfing here for about 25 years.”
His neighbors call Bill Lydgate ‘the surfing river ecologist’. He surfs more days than not so he keeps close tabs on the water temperatures.
Bill Lydgate: “Typical temperatures on the north coast of California range from 50 to 52 degrees. Warm days in the summer it might reach 54 to 55 degrees. Last year we had this incredible period where it was in the 60s.”
That spell actually lasted from September through December.
Bill Lydgate: “… So warm that we could give up our booties, give up on our gloves, and take our hoods off.”
What Bill was feeling while surfing off the Humboldt coast last fall had actually begun a year earlier in the fall of 2013. That’s when a ridge of high pressure parked itself over the west coast and all but shut down the winds in the Gulf of Alaska.
It created what became known as “The Blob” - a 1,000 square mile patch in the gulf with temperatures about four degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual.
The Blob headed south and by last spring it had reached the Washington and Oregon coast. Now here comes the twist - a double-whammy really - because as this was happening a totally unrelated warm blob was forming off Baja and by last fall - about the time when Bill was taking off his hood and booties - the two blobs met and temperatures in some places jumped a whopping seven degrees above average.
Nate Mantua: “At the very basic level it is the wind.”
Nate Mantua is a Santa Cruz-based climate expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
Nate Mantua: “It is unusually persistent wind patterns that are of a flavor that reduces the loss of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere and also the import of colder water from below or from higher latitudes.”
In other words, it’s not so much a warming ocean as it is an ocean that isn’t cooling like it usually would; Eric Bjorkstedt is a fisheries biologist with NOAA, and I caught up with him at Humboldt State University’s marine laboratory.
Eric Bjorkstedt: “And now instead of having cooler, more nutrient-rich water coming into the system, we have warmer, nutrient-poor water coming into the system. Totally different set of plankton species. Totally different base of the food chain.”
Warm water plankton have less fat - and therefore less energy - than cold water plankton.
Eric Bjorkstedt : “And that can have consequences for things that eat plankton like salmon, seabirds, et cetera. They’re not seeing the prey they’re used to seeing this time of year. And you can imagine they’re having a hard time finding what they need to eat.”
This past year has already seen unprecedented die-offs of shorebirds called ‘Cassin’sAuklets’ as well as sea lion pups. In both cases, temperature-driven changes at the bottom of the food chain are considered to be the primary cause of death. Which brings up the issue of salmon survival.
Tim Klassen: “I would worry more about the small salmon.”
Tim Klassen has fished the north coast of California since the late sixties, and for the past eight years has skippered fishing charters out of Eureka.
Tim Klassen: “Because when they first leave the rivers they got to find food right away. The adult salmon seem to have a way of adapting to what conditions are. They will go deeper where it is still cooler water. They’ll switch their food sources. So they can adapt.”
Klassen also thinks the rockfish population will be adversely affected by warm water and they may even skip a spawning year if the temperatures remain high. This will certainly affect towns like Trinidad which have traditionally catered to both commercial and recreational rockfish fishermen.
Will water temperatures return to normal anytime soon? Nate Mantua of NOAA thinks we may have to wait.
Nate Mantua: “I think that we might see another year of warm water off the West coast because of this development of El Niño in the tropics. And we know that it will favor a warm fall, winter and spring in the northeast Pacific again.”
Just this past few weeks there have been some cold upwellings along the coast but they’re having little overall impact on what remains a very warm northeast Pacific ocean.
