ePrints

Longer and more frequent marine heatwaves over the past century

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Pip MooreORCiD

Downloads

• Published version [.pdf]

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

© 2018 The Author(s). Heatwaves are important climatic extremes in atmospheric and oceanic systems that can have devastating and long-term impacts on ecosystems, with subsequent socioeconomic consequences. Recent prominent marine heatwaves have attracted considerable scientific and public interest. Despite this, a comprehensive assessment of how these ocean temperature extremes have been changing globally is missing. Using a range of ocean temperature data including global records of daily satellite observations, daily in situ measurements and gridded monthly in situ-based data sets, we identify significant increases in marine heatwaves over the past century. We find that from 1925 to 2016, global average marine heatwave frequency and duration increased by 34% and 17%, respectively, resulting in a 54% increase in annual marine heatwave days globally. Importantly, these trends can largely be explained by increases in mean ocean temperatures, suggesting that we can expect further increases in marine heatwave days under continued global warming.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Oliver ECJ, Donat MG, Burrows MT, Moore PJ, Smale DA, Alexander LV, Benthuysen JA, Feng M, Sen Gupta A, Hobday AJ, Holbrook NJ, Perkins-Kirkpatrick SE, Scannell HA, Straub SC, Wernberg T

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Nature Communications

Year: 2018

Volume: 9

Issue: 1

Online publication date: 10/04/2018

Acceptance date: 08/03/2018

Date deposited: 11/12/2020

ISSN (electronic): 2041-1723

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03732-9

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03732-9

PubMed id: 29636482

Altmetrics

Funding

Share