Frequent marine heatwaves hidden below the surface of the global ocean

Abstract

Marine heatwaves are extreme warm water events that can cause devastating impacts on ecosystems and have complex socio-economic ramifications. Surface signals and drivers of marine heatwaves have been extensively investigated based on satellite observations, whereas their vertical structure in the global ocean remains unclear. In this study, we identify marine heatwave events in the epipelagic zone (0–200 m) using a four-dimensional spatio-temporal framework based on three ocean reanalysis datasets. We find that only about half of the marine heatwave events have continuous surface signals during their life cycles and around one-third always reside in the subsurface ocean without any imprint on sea surface temperature. The annual number of these subsurface marine heatwave events shows a significant increase in response to subsurface mean-state warming during the past three decades. Our findings reveal the limitation of identifying marine heatwaves solely based on the sea surface temperature and underscore the necessity of subsurface observations for monitoring marine heatwaves.