Mysterious Ocean Heat Blob That Killed Hundreds of Sea Creatures in 2016 Was Probably Caused by Humans
iStockIf we don't pay attention to global warming, coral reefs like this will be increasingly threatened by prolonged periods of coral bleaching. “When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.” — NOAA
Though it sounds more like a 1950s horror movie title, "The Blob" was a 2016 event in the world's oceans, causing the deaths of hundreds of sea creatures. A new study has determined that humans are likely the culprit that caused it. The study was published online in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
“We investigate[d] two regions — Northern Australia (NA) and the Bering Sea/Gulf of Alaska (BSGA) — which, in 2016, experienced their most intense marine heat waves (MHWs) in the 35-year record,” say the study authors. “The NA event triggered mass bleaching of corals in the Great Barrier Reef, while the BSGA event likely fed back on the atmosphere leading to modified rainfall and temperature patterns over North America, and it is feared it may lead to widespread species range shifts as was observed during the ‘Blob’ marine heat wave which occurred immediately to the south over 2013–15.”
Though the scientists say they cannot say definitively that human activity is 100 percent to blame, they found that humans made it 53 times more likely to happen as a result of the greenhouse effect.
“We are virtually certain anthropogenic climate change played a role in increasing the likelihood of their event durations and intensities…. it was extremely unlikely that natural variability alone led to the observed anomalies. the researchers reported.
In other words: This was not just nature taking its course.
