Abstract

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) can cause devastating impacts to marine life. Despite the serious consequences of MHWs, our understanding of their drivers is largely based on isolated case studies rather than any systematic unifying assessment. Here we provide the first global assessment under a consistent framework by combining a confidence assessment of the historical refereed literature from 1950 to February 2016, together with the analysis of MHWs determined from daily satellite sea surface temperatures from 1982–2016, to identify the important local processes, large-scale climate modes and teleconnections that are associated with MHWs regionally. Clear patterns emerge, including coherent relationships between enhanced or suppressed MHW occurrences with the dominant climate modes across most regions of the globe – an important exception being western boundary current regions where reports of MHW events are few and ocean-climate relationships are complex. These results provide a global baseline for future MHW process and prediction studies.

Details

Title
A global assessment of marine heatwaves and their drivers
Author
Holbrook, Neil J 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Scannell, Hillary A 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Alexander Sen Gupta 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Benthuysen, Jessica A 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Feng, Ming 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Oliver, Eric C J 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Alexander, Lisa V 3 ; Burrows, Michael T 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Donat, Markus G 8   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Hobday, Alistair J 9   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Moore, Pippa J 10   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Sarah E 3 ; Smale, Dan A 11   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Straub, Sandra C 12   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Wernberg, Thomas 12   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 
2  School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA 
3  Climate Change Research Centre, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 
4  Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Queensland, Australia 
5  CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia 
6  Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia; Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada 
7  Scottish Association for Marine Science, Scottish Marine Institute, Argyll, Scotland, UK 
8  Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain 
9  CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 
10  Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK 
11  Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, The Laboratory, Citadel Hill, Plymouth, UK; UWA Oceans Institute and School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia 
12  UWA Oceans Institute and School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia 
Pages
1-13
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Jun 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10206-z
ProQuest document ID
2240137576
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.