Observed Frequent Occurrences of Marine Heatwaves in Most Ocean Regions during the Last Two Decades

Zhang, Xiaojuan; Zheng, Fei; Zhu, Jiang; Chen, Xingrong

doi:10.1007/s00376-022-1291-3

Data Description Article
Open Access
Published: 14 May 2022

Observed Frequent Occurrences of Marine Heatwaves in Most Ocean Regions during the Last Two Decades

Xiaojuan Zhang^1,2,
Fei Zheng^1,3,
Jiang Zhu^1,2 &
Xingrong Chen⁴

Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are prolonged high-temperature extreme events in the ocean that can be devastating to marine life and seriously impact climate systems and economies. This paper describes the accessibility, content, characteristics, and potential applications of an MHW dataset to facilitate its use in scientific research. Daily intensities of global MHWs from 1982 to 2020 were analyzed using gridded SST data sourced from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Optimum Interpolation (OI) SST V2 high-resolution (0.25°) dataset. The analysis shows a linear increase in the frequency of MHWs in most ocean regions of the world as well as significant interdecadal changes. This data product can be used as a basic dataset to study the seasonal to decadal changes in extreme ocean events and explore the effects of global warming on the surface layers of oceans during the last 40 years.

Data availability statement and sharing policy. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Science Data Bank at https://www.scidb.cn/en/s/nqauYn (doi: https://doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.00872). Users are encouraged to download and share the datasets. All the datasets are free.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (Grant No. ZDBS-LY-DQC010), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41876012), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB42000000), and the National Key R&D Program of China 2018YFB0505000. NOAA High-Resolution SST data were provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

International Center for Climate and Environment Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China
Xiaojuan Zhang, Fei Zheng & Jiang Zhu
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
Xiaojuan Zhang & Jiang Zhu
Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China
Fei Zheng
National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center, Beijing, 100081, China
Xingrong Chen

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Xiaojuan Zhang
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Fei Zheng
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Jiang Zhu
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Xingrong Chen
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Correspondence to Fei Zheng.

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Zhang, X., Zheng, F., Zhu, J. et al. Observed Frequent Occurrences of Marine Heatwaves in Most Ocean Regions during the Last Two Decades. Adv. Atmos. Sci. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-022-1291-3

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Received: 29 July 2021
Revised: 13 January 2022
Accepted: 18 January 2022
Published: 14 May 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-022-1291-3

Key words

marine heatwave
daily intensity
linear trend
climate extremes