Marine heatwave

A marine heatwave is a period of abnormally high sea surface temperatures compared to what is typical for a given season and location, driven by factors ranging from short term weather fronts and seasonal or decadal climate modes such as El Nino to human caused climate change. Such heatwaves can affect marine ecosystems over vast areas and for weeks, months, or even years, sometimes reaching subsurface waters, and have been linked to events including coral bleaching, sea star wasting disease, harmful algal blooms, and mass mortality of seafloor communities. Major marine heatwaves have struck the Great Barrier Reef in 2002, the Mediterranean Sea in 2003, the Northwest Atlantic in 2012, and the Northeast Pacific from 2013 to 2016, and scientists expect such heatwaves to grow more frequent, longer, and more intense as sea surface temperatures continue to rise with global warming. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/