After changing regional weather patterns and taking a bite out of sea life, an unusually persistent patch of warm water in the northeastern Pacific has chilled out.
With its own forms of underwater weather, the ocean has fronts and circulation patterns that move heat and nutrients around its basins. Changes near the surface often start with changes in the depths.
Temperature anomalies in the eastern Pacific Ocean are both influencing and being influenced by unusual weather patterns. The effects are rippling through the marine environment.
This sea surface temperature anomaly causes strange summer weather around the world, such as drought in the Mid-Atlantic states, cool temperatures in California, and rain in Indonesia.
Examining temperatures from the depths of the ocean, JPL scientists have found that lower layers of the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans grew much warmer during a decade when surface temperatures cooled.