Finally got a chance to scan the IPCC AR6 chapter on Oceans and Cryosphere - makes for pretty grim/stark reading. Interesting that AR6 has a whole section on marine heatwaves, which cites a lot of recent work from our MHW working group (1/n)(marineheatwaves.org)
Conversation
MHWs are periods of prolonged anomalously warm sea temperatures - which can be empirically detected/described as outlined in our definitions paper: sciencedirect.com/science/articl (2/n)
1
4
Using this definition we then showed that MHWs have significantly increased over past century, in terms of duration and frequency, largely due to background ocean heating: nature.com/articles/s4146. (3/n)
1
2
Bad news is that using climate model projections it is clear that MHWs will get worse in coming decades internal-journal.frontiersin.org/articles/10.33 (4/n)
1
2
Why should we care?!? Extreme warming events in the oceans impact on entire ecosystems, by driving mass mortality events, loss of biodiversity, shifts in ecological structure and functioning: nature.com/articles/s4155 (5/n)
1
1
4
Recent examples of this are the West Australian MHW of 2011 which destroyed kelp forests, seagrass meadows and impacted fisheries, the 'Blob' in NE Pacific which disrupted entire ecosystems, and multiple MHWs in Med (6/n)
1
2
Recent advances have improved our understanding of the drivers of MHWs, which are complex and interacting nature.com/articles/s4146 (7/n)
1
2
But there is still a long way to go to understand these events, and to develop tools to forecast and adapt to minimise their impacts: nature.com/articles/s4301 (n/n)
4