On the last day of winter, as California was in the midst of a historic early-season heat wave, the ocean off Southern California crossed a striking threshold.
At Scripps Pier in La Jolla, a long-running sea surface temperature record topped out at 71 degrees, the warmest March reading in the station’s history. It was not an isolated spike. The reading broke a daily record, as had the day before. And the day before that.
“The Scripps Pier sea surface temperature bucket measurements have been hitting some all-time highs for the past few months,” said Art Miller, a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies the dynamics of water currents.
Experts like Miller say the warm ocean temperatures are part of something larger now taking shape. A strong marine heat wave has developed off the Southern California coast, and the next several weeks will determine whether it fades or deepens into something that carries real ecological and meteorological consequences into summer.
How did we get here?
The same stubborn atmospheric pattern that fueled California’s heat wave on land also helped warm the ocean…