Feature by Donia Moore
mark this year. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believe it will be the most powerful El Niño to warm our waters since records were first kept 144 years ago. Very unusual weather we’ve seen across the world this year in- cludes: 70 degrees in New York City on Christmas Day; lack of rain in Southern California; abnormally dry weather in Brazil and Indonesia; and high precipitation in Africa causing increases in malaria and dengue fever. According to our Ocean Institute ma-
rine scientist community in next-door Dana Point, El Niño’s warm water current starts in the Pacific Ocean at the Equator. It swiftly moves to every corner of the global oceans, visible on every weather radar in every country in the world. It affects trade winds, snowfall, precipitation, heat and cold everywhere. Although it happens ap- proximately every four to seven years, this year’s El Niño is expected to be one of the
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El Niño Global Warming or Natural Phenomenon? N
o matter where you stand on global warming, there’s no doubt that El Niño has officially made its
Sea surface temperature December 2015
three strongest since the 1950s. El Niño means the little boy, or Christ
Child in Spanish. It was originally recognized by fishermen off the coast of South America in the 1600s, with the appearance of unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean. The name was chosen based on the time of year (around December) during which these warm water events tended to occur.
Changes The most obvious change occurring with
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El Niño is the rising temperature of the current welling up from Mexico, working its way across the globe, and causing weather changes in every region. Scientists say that this year’s El Niño may cause the oceans, especially the Pacific, to warm as much as 10 degrees above normal. While global warming is credited with increas- ing temperatures by two to three degrees, the effects of El Niño will be much more dramatic. Added together, the temperature increase means that the world’s oceans are facing enor- mous changes. An unusual addition to this year’s El Niño is a never-before-seen phenom- enon called, simply, “The Blob.” This 1,000 mile pocket of warm water off California’s coast is not a current and does not shift posi- tion, as nearly as scientists can tell. It seems to be stationery but the water temperature is def- initely increasing. Scientists do not know where it came from and why it is not moving with the current. “One of the most dramatic changes we’ve
seen locally is a decrease in feeder fish,” says Leslie Kretschmar, Director, At Sea Programs for the Ocean Institute. “Because of the in- creasingly warmer ocean temperatures, these fish are diving deeper and swimming out fur-
ther into the ocean to find cooler water. This affects our local sea lion population. We are los- ing many of this year’s pups because their mothers have to go so far out into the ocean for food that they often don’t make it back, and the pups ultimately starve. On the other hand, we are seeing an enormous increase in warm water fish relocating into our waters from Mex- ico. Fisherman no longer have to go to Mexico to catch tropical blue fin tuna and El Dorado, since these fish are moving into our area.” Other unusual visitors to California shores in- clude swarms of hundreds of thousands of red tuna crabs, green sea turtles, whale sharks and hammerhead sharks.
Too Much Food? Another recent result of El Niño is a mas-
sive over-abundance of algal bloom, producing domoic acid, a neurotoxin made worse by warm waters and lethal to sea animals ingesting it in food sources. In 2015, over 3,000 sea lions and fur seals, and thousands of sea birds per- ished and washed up on California beaches, possibly unsuspecting victims of a food chain spiked with the toxin. In 2010, a group of marine scientists re-
ported that phytoplankton, or algae, had de- clined globally. Since phytoplankton provides the base of the marine food chain, this finding was greeted with concern. Not all scientists were in agreement. The Ocean Institute be- came involved in a study launched in 2013 to try to determine the abundance of this impor- tant food source. The aim of the study is to build a map of the oceans that charts the sea- sonal and annual changes of the phytoplankton from now through the future, regardless of ge- ographic boundaries in the sea. To monitor
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