Indian Ocean convection caused a powerful planetary wave that led to a drought in South America and a marine heatwave in the South Atlantic that lasted for months.
An international team, led by Australian researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) and the Institute for Marine and Antarctic (IMAS) studies, have published in Nature Communications the first global assessment of the major drivers of marine heatwaves.
Marine heatwaves are becoming longer and more frequent. A global assessment of marine heatwaves has concluded that they have “the capacity to restructure entire ecosystems and disrupt the provision of ecological goods and services in the coming decades".
The increase in frequency and intensity of ocean heatwaves over the past 30 years has had profound impacts on certain marine ecosystems and significantly impacted the industries that depend on them. According to new research in Nature Climate Change, marine heatwaves are now a clear and present threat to global biodiversity.
This paper proposes a standard categorisation and naming framework for marine heatwaves that works in a similar way to schemes used for tropical cyclones or earthquakes.