BC’s warming fjords

For those who have braved swimming in British Columbia’s spectacular, glacier-fed fjords, “warm” is probably not a word that springs to mind. But at least four of British Columbia’s fjords are real hotspots for climate change. Since the 1950s, they’ve warmed up to six times faster than the rest of the ocean, according to new data.

— By Nicola Jones —

Oceanographer Jennifer Jackson of the Hakai Institute* is preparing the data for publication and has been presenting it in a lecture tour for the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society that started this January.

One cause of the rampant warming is a marine heatwave known as the Blob that hit the northeast Pacific starting in 2013. About 3 ˚C warmer than usual, this patch of water stretched all the way from Alaska to California. No one knows exactly what caused the Blob to form, though it had something to do with higher air pressures, lower winds, and calm conditions that didn’t mix and cool waters as usual. 

Read on in Hakai Magazine…