RETURN OF THE BLOB

The title of this post is reminiscent of a horror movie and it relates to this article in which a discussion of the area of warm water in the northern Pacific (the blob) and its role in the recent upsurge in world temperatures is to be found. By December of 2015 many considered the blob had dissipated; By then the El Niño was intense. But the latest measurements indicate that the blob has not gone away and is currently resting several hundred metres below the ocean’s surface. The new data indicates that the region’s upper waters are being mixed by the wind again and coming back to normal temperatures, but the residual effect of the blob is still there at about 150 to 200 metres below the surface.