Unprecedented Toxic Algae Blooms in Store
- Chelsea Harvey
- Oct 20, 2016
- 1 min read
Last year, a massive toxic algae bloom swept the US's West Coast, resulting in record-breaking levels of a potentially deadly brain-damaging chemical and closing fisheries from California to British Columbia. Since then, scientists have been investigating the causes of the event — and now, a group of researchers think they’ve figured out how the event, which they term “unprecedented,” happened.
The algae bloom was facilitated by an unusual “blob” of warm water lurking in the Pacific Ocean at that time, the scientists say. And while the blob itself may have been largely brought on by weird but natural ocean and atmospheric variations, climate change may result in similar conditions cropping up in the future — and hence, more frequent toxic algal blooms. The work was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Algae blooms aren’t uncommon off the West Coast. In fact, they tend to happen around the same time every year, said the new study’s lead author Ryan McCabe, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean.
Aaron Hawkins