Hawaii News Now ran a story on their evening news Sunday night describing a heat wave currently underway in the Pacific Ocean.
While record-breaking temperatures throughout the islands have been making news for months, HNN’s report focused on ocean temperatures. It referred to the temperature rise as the “second-largest Pacific Ocean heat wave,” after another similar cycle that occurred 2014-2016.
HNN reported that ocean temperatures around Hawaii have been about 3 degrees above normal, and that this has lasted for about 100 days.
If trends continue, next summer will be hotter than this year has been.
It isn’t just that we’ll have to drag through months of warm, muggy summer weather.
Doesn’t the rise in ocean temperatures also mean a higher chance of hurricanes, or potentially more violent storms? That was certainly the case during that 2014-2016 period.
And I have to wonder whether higher summer temperatures and fewer trade wind days are eventually going to impact Hawaii tourism. We’re no longer enjoying as temperate a climate as we did when I was growing up.
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I really do wish climate-change deniers would live an extra 100 years.
They’d have to find new ways to blame liberals when dozens of cities vanish underwater!! Maybe it’s god responding to same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, reality beckons.
Only 12 years remain according to “Greenies” so how will we be able to be around in another 100 years, much less past predicted world ending 2031? Get Green Straight.
The climate here seems notably different now than it was as recently as the 80s through the early to mid 2000s.
Not sure less tourists is necessarily a bad thing though.
Responding to Lei, you apparently misunderstand what the warning about 13 years is all about. Given the rate at which we are releasing climate change gases into the atmosphere, we have about 13 years before we hit the limit that was estimated to give us a chance of keeping the eventual climate change below an increase of 1.5 C (2.7 F). This is a goal for reducing carbon dioxide emissions 45% below 2010 level by 2050 so that we achieve “net zero” levels of carbon dioxide emissions.
If global temperatures rise above 1.5 C, it is much more likely that we will lose all the coral reefs due to bleaching and that coastal flooding and erosion due to melting of Greenland and Antarctica ice will be much more severe. In addition, the probability of wind damage, storm surge, and flooding from hurricanes and intense storms, extreme heat events, droughts, and related wildfires will greatly increase.
Humans will probably survive even if we fail to hold climate change to the 1.5 C goal, but we owe it to future generations to make the utmost effort to to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the net zero level to minimize global warming and to adapt our infrastructure, homes, public buildings, businesses, economic systems, and historic and cultural resources to make our communities more sustainable and resilient to the impact of the increased hazards that climate change will bring for our descendants.
Same idea as eating SPAM, nuclear food, pumpkin spice sold out!
Think you had better discuss this matter with Tutu Pele, She and El Niño have much more impact.
What?
This oceanic heat wave or blob, is different from the El Nino of 2019, which we just came out of. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/august-2019-el-niño-update-stick-fork-it
I thought, whew, we’re clear, but this heat wave is not good news. I’m afraid that we’re looking at the new normal, and that is bad news.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/new-marine-heatwave-emerges-west-coast-resembles-blob
Species such as orcas who depend on west coast salmon are going to be in for a rough time. Expect to see more disruptions of the ecosystem and mortality events for a number of species.
Trade winds and not sunshine make Hawaii unique. Central America, Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia all have year-round sunny weather and exotic natural beauty, but they are unbearable. We face not just less tourism, but less rainfall and more political strife with much of the year becoming one “long hot summer”.
Home prices are high but firm along the coast, the bubble is in working-class neighborhoods miles away. Homes keep getting built in vulnerable coastal areas, but what happens after one too many hurricanes and the smart money finally gets a clue and stops building there?