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Title: Marine Heatwaves – Trends, Impacts Attribution, and Software

Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 4 pm US EDT / 1 pm US PDT/8 pm UTC - Wednesday, October 24, 7 am Australian EST 

Presented by: Alistair Hobday of CSIRO and Eric Oliver of Dalhousie University. 

Extreme climate and weather events shape the structure of biological systems and affect the biogeochemical functions and services they provide for society. There is overwhelming evidence that the frequency, duration, intensity and timing of extreme events on land are changing under global warming, increasing the risk of severe, pervasive and in some cases irreversible impacts on natural and socio-economic systems.  Climatic extremes also occur in the ocean, and recent decades have seen many high-impact marine heatwaves (MHWs) –anomalously warm water events that may last many months and extend over thousands of square kilometres. A range of biological and economic impacts have been associated with some intense MHWs. We will cover historical and projected trends in these events, and the role of attribution for communication and mechanistic understanding. Growing public interest in marine extreme events means that measuring the severity of these phenomena in real time is becoming more important, and we propose a method for consistent description of MHWs that is compatible with an underlying long term trend. Finally, we will demonstrate software that is available for use to study or follow MHWs in your area of interest

For more information and to register, click here.