slade's Link
""Last year the largest Kelvin wave ever seen in the Pacific ocean developed in February. After it came ashore and the surge of warm water moved up the Pacific coast, the upwelling of nutrient rich cold water dramatically slowed, and marine life began starving up and down the coast of north America. As the warm water moved north from the equator it merged with an enormous mass of warm stagnant water dubbed "the blob" which had built up in the central north Pacific ocean under the mound of high barometric pressure known as the Pacific high. Because the Pacific high had expanded north of its normal position, possibly because of climate change, warm, stagnant low nutrient water covered a large percentage of the surface of the north Pacific ocean. That stagnant water came ashore on the coast of the Pacific northwest and Alaska as the surge of warm water from the Kelvin wave moved up the California coast. The warm stagnant water lacked nutrients to support the growth of krill and copepods which are at the bottom of the food chain. Species that fed on krill and copepods had little to eat. Juvenile birds were the first to be affected by the lack of food. The west coast marine die off is already a crisis but it's likely to get much worse this summer and fall as the surge of warm water moves up the coast from the huge Kelvin wave now coming ashore.""
(of a body of water or the atmosphere of a confined space) having no current or flow and often having an unpleasant smell as a consequence.
I find it odd, given the definition of "stagnant" as it applies to water, that it somehow "came ashore on the coast of the Pacific northwest and Alaska ...".
If something like a wave was pushing it, wouldn't the two have mixed? And if thy did, the stagnant water would not have been stagnant any longer.
Or are we re-defining words again?
:-)
Well that explains the huge whale die off that everyone is witnessing up and down the Pacific Coast.
