中国海洋大学李芙蓉的课题组宣布，他们的最新研究揭示了频繁的海洋热浪隐藏于全球海洋表面之下。该项研究成果发表在2023年11月20日出版的《自然—地球科学》期刊上。

研究人员基于三个海洋再分析数据集，建立了一个四维时空框架，来识别海洋表层带(0-200 m)的海洋热浪事件。研究发现，只有大约一半的海洋热浪事件在其生命周期中具有持续的表面信号，大约三分之一的海洋热浪事件始终存在于海洋次表层中，而对海洋表面温度没有任何影响。在过去三十年中，这些次表层海洋热浪事件的年度数量显示，其对次表层平均状态变暖的响应显著增加。研究发现揭示了仅基于海洋表面温度来识别海洋热浪的局限性，并强调了监测海洋热浪的次表层观测的必要性。

据了解，海洋热浪是极端的暖水事件，可能对生态系统造成破坏性影响，并产生复杂的社会经济后果。基于卫星观测，前人已经对海洋热浪的表层信号和驱动因素进行了广泛的研究，但对它们在全球海洋中的垂直结构仍知之甚少。

附：英文原文

Title: Frequent marine heatwaves hidden below the surface of the global ocean

Author: Sun, Di, Li, Furong, Jing, Zhao, Hu, Shijian, Zhang, Bohai

Issue&Volume: 2023-11-20

Abstract: Marine heatwaves are extreme warm water events that can cause devastating impacts on ecosystems and have complex socio-economic ramifications. Surface signals and drivers of marine heatwaves have been extensively investigated based on satellite observations, whereas their vertical structure in the global ocean remains unclear. In this study, we identify marine heatwave events in the epipelagic zone (0–200m) using a four-dimensional spatio-temporal framework based on three ocean reanalysis datasets. We find that only about half of the marine heatwave events have continuous surface signals during their life cycles and around one-third always reside in the subsurface ocean without any imprint on sea surface temperature. The annual number of these subsurface marine heatwave events shows a significant increase in response to subsurface mean-state warming during the past three decades. Our findings reveal the limitation of identifying marine heatwaves solely based on the sea surface temperature and underscore the necessity of subsurface observations for monitoring marine heatwaves.

DOI: 10.1038/s41561-023-01325-w

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01325-w