Abstract
Marine heatwaves (MHWs) can cause irreversible damage to marine ecosystems and livelihoods. Appropriate MHW characterization remains difficult, because the choice of a sea surface temperature (SST) temporal baseline strongly influences MHW identification. Following a recent work suggesting that there should be a communicating baseline for long-term ocean temperature trends (LTT) and MHWs, we provided an effective and quantitative solution to calculate LTT and MHWs simultaneously by using the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) method. The long-term nonlinear trend of SST obtained by EEMD shows superiority over the traditional linear trend in that the data extension does not alter prior results. The MHWs identified from the detrended SST data exhibited low sensitivity to the baseline choice, demonstrating the robustness of our method. We also derived the total heat exposure (THE) by combining LTT and MHWs. The THE was sensitive to the fixed-period baseline choice, with a response to increasing SST that depended on the onset time of a perpetual MHW state (identified MHW days equal to the year length). Subtropical areas, the Indian Ocean, and part of the Southern Ocean were most sensitive to the long-term global warming trend.
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Data Availability Statement
The MPI-ESM1.2-HR daily SST data are available on the WCRP CMIP6 website at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/. The code used to identify MHW events is publicly available at https://github.com/ZijieZhaoMMHW/m_mhw1.0. The EMD package used for nonlinear trend analysis is available in MATLAB version 2018a and later versions.
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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41821004, 42276025), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (No. ZR2021MD027), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2022YFE0140500), and the Project of “Development of China-ASEAN blue partnership” started in 2021. This work is a contribution to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) through both the Decade Collaborative Centre on Ocean-Climate nexus and Coordination amongst decade implementing partners in China (DCC-OCC) and the approved Ocean to Climate Seamless Forecasting System Program (OSF)
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Zhang, M., Cheng, Y., Wang, G. et al. Long-term ocean temperature trend and marine heatwaves. J. Ocean. Limnol. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-023-3160-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-023-3160-z