Let There be Blobs

                                                 Now there are three warm blobs in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean


How does a blob reproduce?  Does it extrude little blob seeds that float away and grow into new blobs or does it split itself in two like a giant amoeba?  Well, however it did it the area of very warm water off California known to scientists as the "Blob" now has two other Blobs to keep it company (see pic above).  A new Blob has formed in the Gulf of Alaska and another Blob covers all of Alaska's Bering Sea.  Both of the Alaska Blobs are bigger then original Blob off California.

Each of the three Blobs is a huge area of warm water with temperatures up to 5°C above normal.  The water in the Blobs is warm enough to contain species of fish that aren't normally seen in these areas, and to not contain the kinds of fish that are normally seen.   The California Blob has been implicated in the record warm temperatures and the drought affecting California and the western US, and no doubt the new Alaska Blobs will also have significant climatic effects on Alaska and nearby areas on the North American continent.

These Blobs are exactly the kind of thing one would expect to see after years of global warming.  Scientists have known for years that much of the excess heat trapped by Greenhouse gases has been going into the oceans, so it really shouldn't be surprising that huge areas of the ocean are warming and Blobs of warm water are appearing.   Nonetheless, there seems to be an odd reluctance to see the Blobs for what they are----a product of global warming.

                                       Record warm global temperatures in March 2015

The Blobs show up nicely in the new NOAA global temperature compilation.  The record warm temperatures produced by the three Blobs appear as a red band along the northwest coast of North America extending from Mexico to Alaska, marking one of the warmest anomalies on the entire planet, which also reached new record warm temperatures in March 2015.  

Personally, I expect still more Blobs to appear elsewhere in the Pacific as well as in other oceans in coming years as global warming becomes more and more intense.    In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I've written a poem on the subject.  Here it is:

There once was a Blob off California
Then two more Blobs formed off Alaska
I see it clear
In future years 
in oceans far and near
more Blobs will appear
So don't say I didn't warn ya