Scientists confused as temperature anomaly reported in the Atlantic Ocean

Despite the steady rise in ocean temperatures, a large area of the Atlantic Ocean near the equator began cooling at a record pace in June of this year. And after a short period of time, it returned to normal temperatures.

Scientists are trying to understand what caused this sharp cooling. However, they have not yet found a clear explanation, LiveScience reports.

According to the researchers, an anomalous cold area of the ocean, covering several degrees north and south of the equator, was formed in early summer after a month-long streak of the warmest surface waters in more than 40 years. "While that region is known to swing between cold and warm phases every few years, the rate at which it plunged from record high to low this time is 'really unprecedented'," said Franz Tuchen, a researcher at the University of Miami in Florida.

"We are still scratching our heads as to what's actually happening. It could be some transient feature that has developed from processes that we don't quite understand," said Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who monitors a set of buoys in the tropics that collect real-time cold data.

According to the researchers, the sea surface temperature in the eastern equatorial Atlantic was the hottest in February and March, when it exceeded 30 degrees Celsius. Franz Tuchen emphasized that these were the warmest months on record since 1982. However, in early June, temperatures began to drop sharply, reaching the lowest temperature of 25 degrees Celsius in late July.

Scientists had predicted that the cold snap could develop into an Atlantic Niña, a regional climate pattern that tends to increase rainfall in West Africa and decrease rainfall in northeastern Brazil as well as in countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea, including Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon.

The phenomenon, which is not as powerful as La Niña in the Pacific and has not been seen since 2013, would have been validated if the colder-than-average temperatures had lasted for three months, until the end of August. However, the cold stretch of water has begun to warm in recent weeks. "The verdict is already quite certain that it's not gonna be classified as Atlantic Niña," emphasized Franz Tuchen.

Scientists have modeled several possible climatic processes, but none of them have explained the anomalies in the Atlantic Ocean.

The recent sharp cold snap, although unprecedented, is unlikely to be explained by human-caused climate change, according to scientists. "I can't rule it out. But at first blush, this is just a natural variation of the climate system over the equatorial Atlantic," McPhaden said.

Using data from satellites, ocean buoys, and other meteorological instruments, Tuchen and McPhaden are among several climate scientists who are closely continuing to monitor the cold spot and any future effects it will have on surrounding continents. These observations may take months to finally unravel the mystery of the sudden change in ocean temperatures.

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