Second vast hot water patch off New Zealand coast leads scientists obvious conclusions

Oceans are the big source of cooling to our Blue Planet but the cool water is deep down

It’s life in the ocean that brings deep cooling power to the surface every night via the living plankton cooling pump

Mother Natures cool zooplankton pumps are shutting down, as evidenced by the appearance of ocean warm patches ‘blobs’ and disappearance of ocean life

In recent years two large patches of ocean water, warm blob, have appeared in the North and South Pacific. The patch in the most recent news, half the size of Australia at more than 2 million sq. kilometers in area lies to the east of New Zealand, it is 4 times larger than the islands of New Zealand. The waters there show a never before seen spike in water temperature of up to 5º-6ºC (11º F) above surrounding waters.

James Renwick, the head of geography, environment and earth sciences at Victoria University in Wellington, said the scale of the temperature spike near the sparsely populated Chatham Islands archipelago was remarkable, and had been building for weeks.

“It’s the biggest patch of above average warming on the planet right now. Normally the temperatures there are about 15°C, at the moment they are about 20°C,” he said.

North Pacific Warm Blob Patch 2014 correlates with a massive decline in ocean life, fish, seabirds, and plankton have plummeted to the lowest levels in history.

In the North Pacific, the reports of a ‘warm blob’ have punctuated climate change reports since 2014. Just off the Pacific Northwest coast a similar-sized blob has appeared though it’s warm water is revealed in just under 3° C of unusual warmth, half that of the South Pacific patch.
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Is this ocean warm blob change due to climate change? More likely it is this ocean change that is driving climate change.

Some scientists are stretching to explain the vast warm patch of ocean in the ever-popular context of climate change. Renwick said the warm blob could be linked to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, as a result of climate change. but he expected it was overwhelmingly due to natural variability – a strong high-pressure system and a lack of wind that might have kept the blob cool.

Wind charts for the South Pacific in the vicinity of the ‘warm patch’ show no diminishment of winds, which has been suggested as a reason why the waters are not cooling.

However, a review of the wind history in the region shows there has been no anomalous large reduction of winds correlated to the warm patch. Indeed in this part of the South Pacific, the winds are quite reliable and strong. The patch near the Chatham Islands that are 44° South lies in ocean waters known as the ‘roaring forties’. Sailors of old avoided the routine maelstroms there whenever possible. Clearly the use of the usual ‘climate change’ suspect by the authors is evidence of their inserting ‘political science’ into their ‘real science’.

What the Southeast Pacific is best known for is being the most mineral-depleted body of ocean water in the world with ocean pasture ecosystems teetering on the brink of becoming the clearest most lifeless water on earth.

Everywhere on this blue planet there is a crisis that far outstrips ‘climate change’ in terms of it wreaking havoc on the environment over the past many decades. This is the collapse of ocean pastures due to reductions of mineral dust that blows in the wind that has in centuries past kept the oceans healthy and abundant.

The region where the loss of the South Pacific Jack Mackerel just happens to coincide with the ‘warm blob’, Click to read more.

The Southeast Pacific has been observed to be in perilous decline for decades. Take the iconic regional fish the Jack mackerel for example, they have declined from catches of 30 million metric tons to less than a tenth of that in two decades. This mackerel fishery is in bad shape as for many years the ocean pastures of the South Pacific on which they depend have become ever more desolate due to the devastating effects of high and rising CO2. That CO2, our CO2, is forcing a global reduction of dust blowing in the wind, and the South Pacific is far from sources of life-giving dust. If that wasn’t enough super-trawlers have been set loose amongst the schools of fish.

In one recent oceanographic research ship report scientists got great press when they proclaimed they had found “the clearest water on earth” while transiting across the region to Valpariso Chile. The water they reported was even clearer than what is found underneath the mile-thick ice sheet of Antarctica where lakes with liquid water right at the freezing point that have not seen the sun for millions of years are not as clear as the waters of the SE Pacific, Jack Mackerel’s home. In the world of water clear=lifeless!

Healthy ocean plankton pastures are filled with unknowable numbers of tiny zooplankton that tend to and consume the daily phytoplankton crop. The tiny zooplankton, like copepods and krill and many others, are food for the rest of the ocean food chain. To avoid being seen during the daylight hours when they tend their ocean pasture crops they spend their days’ hundreds of meters down in the cold dark waters.

Zooplankton, tiny animals that perform synchronous swimming in countless multitudes stir the ocean acting as living ‘solar-powered’ heat pumps. Their collective cooling power matches or may even dwarf the warming power of humanity’s greenhouse gases. Click to read more

Natures Air Conditioning Plankton Cooling Pumps Are Shutting Down

Every night they swim rapidly to the surface to graze their phytoplankton crop, they bring with them cold water and nutrients from the depths. Before the sunrises, they dive swiftly back to the deep thermocline where the will spend the day ‘chewing their cud’ and waiting in the safety of darkness for the next night to come. On nights with a full moon, they won’t swim to the surface.

The reason ocean regions far from land have suffered massive ocean pasture decline is that their dust is the most vital of all the factors to their phytoplankton pasture abundance. The farther from sources of dust the more delicate the balance of nature. Nowhere on this blue planet is farther from its vital dust than the South Pacific east of New Zealand. The second most dust sensitive ocean region is the Eastern North Pacific. With these simple ecological characteristics in mind one is drawn to the status of their vital dust.

In a new report just released by NASA a 20-year dust decline is reported using the best of satellite instruments. This 20-year time frame shows a steady annual decline and infers the dust has been disappearing for decades longer.

The Culprit Seen In Disappearing Clouds Of Dust

Dust on this blue planet that reaches out to the ocean pastures far from land doesn’t originate in very many places. The South Pacific dust comes almost entirely from Australia. The Northern Pacific and indeed the North Atlantic dust originates in China and Mongolia.

When dust for the ocean is scarce the ocean pastures, as has been the case for the past 50+years, those ocean pastures have become clear blue lifeless deserts. In the ocean, the same pasture ecology operates as we know for pastures on land. The difference is the fact that ocean pastures require dustfall instead of rainfall to thrive and sustain the ‘livestock’, the fish.

If you dare you can follow this link to my post with references to hundreds of stories on the demise of ocean life. Click to read more

With today’s decades-long worsening demise of dust for the oceans, the widely reported collapse of plankton and fisheries is easily attributed to the drought of dust.

Ocean warm blob patches are evidence of the collapse of Mother Natures Zooplankton Cooling Pump

The evidence for ocean pasture collapse is far more than the presence of ocean warm patches (blobs). The most striking evidence of ocean pastures being 50+ years into collapse are the many global reports of the disappearance of plankton, fish, seabirds, sea lions, whales, all of ocean life. To put the ‘climate change’ brand on ocean pasture collapse and appearance of warm patches/blobs is insane and it prevents the responses that the oceans need from taking precedence.

Ocean plankton pastures around the world are being reported to have lost up to 70% of their plankton. We can and must restore our ocean pastures. Click to read more.

While the bad news is that ocean pasture collapse is at such a dire state, there is a silver lining. Ocean pasture restoration by the replenishment of mineral dust has been a topic of intensive R&D for more than 30 years.

This R&D effort has seen half a billion in public and private funds devoted to real experiments at sea that have proven that when a sustainable sized ocean pasture has a properly prescribed dust replenishment prescription delivered at the right time and manner that ocean pasture immediately is restored to historic levels of health and abundance.

My 2012 ocean pasture replenishment and restoration work in the NE Pacific returned the ocean to life as seen in the largest catch of salmon in all of history in Alaska the next year. Click to read more

That restoration starts with the phytoplankton, then follows the zooplankton, the fish, the seabirds, the whales, all of ocean life. All of that life that comes to the clear blue ocean that has suddenly become a Garden of Eden of abundance isn’t there as freeloaders looking for a free meal. They come to work their ocean pasture, to stir and fertilize, and cool it and of course, they work for food which with their help grows in abundance.

We can and we must begin the restoration of ocean pastures in all the world’s oceans. Join me. It just works.