Warmest Waters Ever on Record in San Diego

San Diego’s ocean waters are warmer than usual. Last week, researchers recorded the warmest sea surface temperature in more than a century. Each day, researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, collect data by hand from the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier. On Friday, the water reached 78.8 degrees — the highest since record keeping began there in 1916. The previous record, 78.6 degrees, had been set just two days earlier.

Posted 2:32 p.m. Aug 7, 2018 — Updated 2:32 p.m. Aug 7, 2018

By

Jennifer Medina

, New York Times

San Diego’s ocean waters are warmer than usual. Last week, researchers recorded the warmest sea surface temperature in more than a century. Each day, researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, collect data by hand from the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier. On Friday, the water reached 78.8 degrees — the highest since record keeping began there in 1916. The previous record, 78.6 degrees, had been set just two days earlier.

We spoke with Clarissa Anderson, a biological oceanographer, to explain the significance of the temperatures.

Her answers have been slightly edited and condensed for clarity:

Q: How often is the water temperature measured and why?

A: We’ve done manual measurements on the waters near the pier since 1916, but we also have an automatic shore station and gliders that go further off the coast and buoys. All of those measurements tell us a comprehensive story about what’s going on in the ocean as a whole. And we’re seeing these high temperatures across the board.

While global warming was not an understood concept a century ago, even then there was an understanding that there’s natural variability and that temperatures could change very abruptly. The understanding was you’ve got to get a baseline understanding. There was a basic understanding that human causes could impact the sea and this was scientific curiosity taking that further.

Q: What does ocean temperature tell you?

A: Temperature is an incredibly important driver. Not only is it a fundamental property, but we know it has a lot of impact on things that are always living in this dynamic system. We’re really pushing against the edges of that variability. We had the blob and then we had El Niño of 2016, and we never really came back down from that. This can signal a tipping point of the environment that we need to be prepared for and we need to be looking at right now.

Q: Is this a sign of global warming?

A: The oceans have been taking so much of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and absorbing that — we would probably be a lot hotter on land if we didn’t have this incredible response from the ocean. We have already seen that the temperatures are changing things. We’ve had algae blooms and a Dungeness crab industry that was really harmed. It is alarming.

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