This event is unprecedented in size and duration in the entire history of observations, and the large-scale impact on the climate of the "bubble" is undeniable. A huge patch of abnormally warm water in the Pacific Ocean - nicknamed the "bubble" - has caused ozone levels to rise over the western US, scientists have found.
The "bubble", which at its maximum spread reached about 9 million square kilometers (3.5 million square miles) from Mexico to Alaska, was thought to mainly affect ocean conditions. But new research has shown that education has a strong impact on air quality as well.
“Ultimately, the bubble is where all the threads come together, and it was the most unusual meteorological event we've had in several decades,” says one of the team members, Dan Jaffe, of Washington State University Botell.
The warm water bubble in the Pacific Ocean was first detected back in 2013, and it continued to spread throughout 2014 and 2015. While it was less obvious in 2016, there are some signs that it persisted in the past year too.
The vast, warm slick was associated with several massive ocean plagues during 2015, including thousands of Californian sea lions starved to death due to water more than 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. … There has also been an "unprecedented" mass death of seabirds in the western United States.
In April 2015, the effects on the mainland were also noted - bouts of strange weather in the United States are associated with higher ocean temperatures. And because of the elevated temperatures, a massive toxic bloom could be observed that stretched along the entire western coast of the United States.
“I can't really give an explanation for what's happening right now,” said later in 2015, marine ecologist Jaime Jahnke of Point Blue.
Jaffe and his team have been monitoring ozone levels over the United States since 2004, and they were able to observe a strange peak in 2015. They wondered if many of the strange events were associated with the bubble, then could this massive ozone surge also have something to do with it?
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“At first we thought we had made a mistake. We looked at our gauges to see if we missed a calibration. But we couldn't find a single mistake,”Jaffe said in a press statement.
"Then I looked at other ozone data from all over the Pacific Northwest and they were all higher this year."
To see if there is a link, the team looked at the slick's lifespan in unprecedented detail, using several satellites around the globe to track temperature fluctuations at the surface of the Pacific Ocean between 2014 and 2016.
They then went back and compared the events in the sea surface temperature records starting in 1910. What they found was unlike any natural phenomenon that has ever been observed in human history.
“This phenomenon is something new,” team member Chelle Gentemann of the Seattle Institute for Earth and Space Research told National Geographic.
“From the study of archival data, it follows that this event is unprecedented in magnitude and duration. There is simply nothing like this in our historical observations."
While the ozone surge was only temporary, the team says we should take this as a warning for the future. Scientists already knew that there was a link between higher atmospheric temperatures and ozone production, but we now know that sea surface temperature can greatly affect this.
And ozone pollution is known to cause serious respiratory dysfunctions, including aggravating pneumonia, asthma and bronchitis. And we better be prepared for the fact that when something like a "bubble" rears its head again.