A study has found that an abnormal increase in water temperature in the South Pacific, fueled by climate change, has caused a drought in Chile, thousands of kilometers away.
Citing a paper published in the Journal of the American Meteorological Society on the 26th (local time), Reuters reported that human-induced climate change is partly responsible for the 'blob' phenomenon, which is an increase in temperature above sea level, and the resulting drought.
A 'blob' refers to a hot water zone that has a higher surface temperature than the surrounding sea water.
In the South Pacific east of New Zealand, there is a giant blob bigger than the entire United States, where the water temperature is 1.5 degrees higher than it was 40 years ago.
Compared to the 0.2 to 1 degree increase in the temperature of the seawater around the blob, the temperature rise is very rapid, the paper said.
The heat of the blob is that it also raises the temperature of the air above the sea, and this hot air is carried by the wind all the way to Chile, creating dry weather.
Chile has experienced a severe drought for over a decade since 2010, causing snow in the Andes and drying out rivers and reservoirs.
"The blob area occupies only 3% of the entire South Pacific Ocean, but it is located in a sensitive zone, causing a chain reaction," said co-author of the paper, René Dario Garrod of the University of Santiago, Chile.
While blobs can form and die naturally, the researchers say, the South Pacific blobs are unusually long-lived and the temperature is rising rapidly, driven by climate change.
"It is very worrisome that human-induced climate change is exacerbating the drought," Andrews Frain of the National Atmospheric Laboratory in the US told Reuters. said.
"The fact that the blob affects the climate thousands of kilometers away shows the far-reaching effects of climate change on the planet," said Dylan Amiya, a marine climatologist at the University of Colorado. "Everything is connected."
(Photo = Yonhap News/Reuters)