What is the Pacific Blob? A Closer Look at the Marine Heat Wave

A massive marine heat wave is building across the Pacific Ocean, spelling trouble for the animal and plant life that call this part of the world home. Here is what you need to know about what climatologists affectionately refer to as "Pacific blob."

Pacific Marine Heat Wave Threatening Marine Life

A record-breaking marine heat wave is shaping up across the Pacific, expanding approximately 5,000 miles from the waters surrounding Japan all the way to the U.S. West Coast. The unusually warm zone of ocean water is being fueled by human-caused global warming.

Climatologists are attributing the hottest summer on record in Japan to the Pacific blob. The island nation saw a new all-time record high on August 5 when the mercury soared to 107.2 degrees.

The increasing temperatures in the Pacific are also being blamed for the higher humidity levels this week across Northern California. Should the humidity levels remain high in this part of the country, the West will be under the gun for more precipitation from atmospheric rivers this winter.

Sea surface temperatures across the North Pacific have been on the upswing in recent years. The region set a record for the month of August this year.

What is most concerning to the experts is the cumulative nature of the rising water temperatures. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the North Pacific warmed at the swiftest rate of any basin during the last decade. The entirety of this basin is currently gripped by the marine heat wave, raising the risk of irreparable damage.

Scientists also caution that the track of the jet stream storms this winter could be significantly impacted if the Pacific blob persists. This could result in atypical weather patterns, including more powerful winter storms.

This is not the first time that the Pacific blob has affected the North Pacific. A similar heating event that began in 2013 persisted into 2016, becoming the most severe of its kind in recorded history.

The nickname of a "blob" comes from the shape that the zone of warm water takes on when looking at a map. However, this year's heat wave is stretching across so much of the Pacific that it looks less like a blob and more like a long tube.

There is a good reason to be concerned about the marine heat wave. Past blobs have triggered mass die-offs of seabirds in coastal portions of Alaska. Sea lions and several fish species have also been impacted during these events.

The Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge detailed that the seabirds in this region have still not recovered from the last marine heat wave. Officials with this agency also confirmed that this part of Alaska has experienced several die-offs of seabirds, forage fish, and marine mammals since this summer.

NOAA said that the current heat wave is the fourth-largest ever observed in the Northeast Pacific. The good news is that the current wave is not expected to linger as long as the event that ran between 2013 and 2016. This is because the current blob is largely confined to the surface waters rather than deeper into the ocean.

The long-range forecast predicts that winds that fire up in the late fall and early winter will help to bring up the cooler waters from below the surface, translating to an end to the marine heat wave. As a result, this blob is likely not to carry as severe an impact as the last event.