The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
The characteristics of tropical cyclones (TCs) and their response to climate change is an issue of broad concern. Based on the Power Dissipation Index (PDI) proposed by Emanuel in 2005, the destructiveness of TCs in the typhoon season (July–October) during the period 1979–2016 over the western North Pacific is investigated. …
As the Earth’s atmosphere warms, the atmospheric circulation changes. These changes vary by region and time of year, but there is evidence that anthropogenic warming causes a general weakening of summertime tropical circulation. Because tropical cyclones are carried along within their ambient environmental wind, there is a plausible a priori …
Potential risks of supply shortages for critical metals including rare-earth elements and yttrium (REY) have spurred great interest in commercial mining of deep-sea mineral resources. Deep-sea mud containing over 5,000 ppm total REY content was discovered in the western North Pacific Ocean near Minamitorishima Island, Japan, in 2013. This REY-rich …
Using reanalysis datasets and numerical simulations, the relationship between the stratospheric Arctic vortex (SAV) and the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) on decadal time scales was investigated. A significant in-phase relationship between the PDO and SAV on decadal time scales during 1950–2014 is found, that is, the North Pacific sea surface …
Ocean plastic can persist in sea surface waters, eventually accumulating in remote areas of the world’s oceans. Here we characterise and quantify a major ocean plastic accumulation zone formed in subtropical waters between California and Hawaii: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and …
We examine the capability of thirteen Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) phase 5 (CMIP5) models in simulating climatology and interannual variability of Winter North Pacific Storm Track (WNPST). It is found that nearly half of the selected models can reproduce the spatial pattern of WNPST climatology. However, the strength and …
Pelagic ecosystems are dynamic ocean regions whose immense natural capital is affected by climate change, pollution, and commercial fisheries. Trophic level–based indicators derived from fishery catch data may reveal the food web status of these systems, but the utility of these metrics has been debated because of targeting bias in …
In this paper, satellite-based precipitation, clouds with infrared (IR) brightness temperature (BT), and tropical cyclone (TC) data from 2000 to 2015 are used to explore the relationship between precipitation, convective cloud, and TC intensity change in the Western North Pacific Ocean. An IR BT of 208 K was chosen as …
The past decades have been characterized by a growing number of climatic anomalies. As these anomalies tend to occur suddenly and unexpectedly, it is often difficult to procure empirical evidence of their effects on natural populations. We analysed how the recent sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in the northeastern Pacific …
In the Salish Sea, the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) is a high trophic indicator of ecosystem health. Three major threats have been identified for this population: reduced prey availability, anthropogenic contaminants, and marine vessel disturbances. These perturbations can culminate in significant morbidity and mortality, usually associated with secondary …
The legacy and reach of anthropogenic influence is most clearly evidenced by its impact on the most remote and inaccessible habitats on Earth. Here we identify extraordinary levels of persistent organic pollutants in the endemic amphipod fauna from two of the deepest ocean trenches (>10,000 metres). Contaminant levels were considerably …
Determining location and timing of ontogenetic shifts in the habitat use of highly migratory species, along with possible intrapopulation variation in these shifts, is essential for understanding mechanisms driving alternate life histories and assessing overall population trends. Measuring variations in multi-year habitat-use patterns is especially difficult for remote oceanic species. …
This special report in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society presents assessments of how climate change may have affected the strength and likelihood of individual extreme events. This fifth edition of explaining extreme events of the previous year (2015) from a climate perspective continues to provide evidence that climate change …
Super typhoons (STYs), intense tropical cyclones of the western North Pacific, rank among the most destructive natural hazards globally. The violent winds of these storms induce deep mixing of the upper ocean, resulting in strong sea surface cooling and making STYs highly sensitive to ocean density stratification. Although a few …
Tropopause temperatures (TPTs) control the amount of stratospheric water vapour, which influences chemistry, radiation and circulation in the stratosphere, and is also an important driver of surface climate. Decadal variability and long-term trends in tropical TPTs as well as stratospheric water vapour are largely unknown. Here, we present for the …
Between the winters of 2013/14 and 2014/15 during the strong North American drought, the northeast Pacific experienced the largest marine heatwave ever recorded. Here we combine observations with an ensemble of climate model simulations to show that teleconnections between the North Pacific and the weak 2014/2015 El Niño linked the …
Study shows radioactive material has been carried across the ocean as far as the shores of U.S. Radiation levels across the Pacific Ocean are rapidly returning to normal five years after a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant spewed gases and liquids into the sea, a study showed Monday. Japan …
The impact of the Indian and Atlantic oceans variability on El Niño–Southern-Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon is investigated through sensitivity experiments with the SINTEX-F2 coupled model. For each experiment, we suppressed the sea surface temperature (SST) variability in either the Indian or Atlantic oceans by applying a strong nudging of the SST …
What would extensive fishery reform look like? In addition, what would be the benefits and trade-offs of implementing alternative approaches to fisheries management on a worldwide scale? To find out, we assembled the largest-of-its-kind database and coupled it to state-of-the-art bioeconomic models for more than 4,500 fisheries around the world. …
Extreme and large-scale warming events in the ocean have been dubbed marine heatwaves,and these have been documented in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This paper examinesthe intensity, duration, and frequency of positive sea surface temperature anomalies in the North Atlanticand North Pacific Oceans over the period 1950–2014 using an …
