The Mystery of Oregon's 'Dead Zone' 235
Roland Piquepaille writes "The area off Cape Perpetua on the central Oregon coast is now a gigantic crab and fish graveyard. It was first discovered in 2002, but according to the Christian Science Monitor, researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) have taken a close-up look into this coastal dead zone. And things are getting worse. A few weeks ago, the researchers measured the level of dissolved oxygen in this part of the ocean. They found that levels were 10 to 30 times lower than normal, down to 0.5 milliliters per liter, a characteristic of hypoxia. And because they have no explanations about this phenomenon, they're even envisioning a total absence of oxygen, or anoxia. Read more for additional details and pictures about this mystery."
No explanation? (Score:4, Informative)
Let me help them out here a bit then. The Oregon zone appears when the wind generates strong currents carrying nutrient-rich but oxygen-poor water from the deep sea to the surface near shore, a process called upwelling. The nutrients encourage the growth of plankton, which eventually dies and falls to the ocean floor. Bacteria there consume the plankton, using up oxygen.
No - I'm not so smart that I knew the answer, but google did - first (and several more) hit.
Re:No explanation? (Score:4, Funny)
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To be sure, the jury is still out on that connection, says Jane Lubchenco, a marine zoologist at Oregon State University who is heading up this day-long expedition. But, she adds, what she and her colleagues see is consistent with projections of global warming's effects on coastal winds in the spring and summer, which drive upwelling of nutrient-laden water.
These effects - identified as early as 1990 by researcher Andrew Bakun, then wi
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Question: where did they install the turbochargers? If the problem is warming, may I suggest installing some intercoolers? just a thought.
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No, the OP just said "The culprit is global warming", and deemed it an explanation. I was pointing out that that in itself, whether a fuller explanation exists in TFA or not, does not itself constitute an explanation. He could have said "RTFA: the culprit is global warming", or said exactly what you said, quoting the article, or done a study entirely his own and drawn these same conclusions, reporting them against all standard practices in a comment on slashdot. But,
Re:No explanation? (Score:4, Funny)
Yep. In order for "the culprit may be global warming" to qualify as an explanation, you'd have to detail just how you think global warming would have anything to do with this.
Well Mr. SmartyPants, think about it.
Have you seen any large wooden ships in the area? Seen any flags with skull and crossbones? Huh? Have you?
Still don't see it? Man, some scientist you'd make...
No drunken songs heard in the night? No parrots? Eyepatches?
Good God man, it's the PIRATES! There aren't any in the area, and haven't been for a while. It's scientific fact: the absence of pirates leads to global warming.
Don't pretend they didn't teach you this in school.
We need a *massive* pirate infusion here. I mean, invite them from madagascar or something. Just get enough pirates in there to balance the ecosystem.
I've sent this proposal to the President many times, and he's never even given me the decency of a reply. I'm heading to the White House this weekend and getting right up on his lawn with my bullhorn so he can see me. To drive my point home, I'm going to wave a shotgun around while I say it. This will really help me get my message across.
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Re:No explanation? (Score:5, Informative)
dead zones (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm, we've been dealing with this in the Gulf for a while. It's recurrant - it goes away, then comes back the next year, and is caused by too much algae, which is basically fed by nitrogen rich runoff from ground water.
The same thing happens between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras and it's believed runoff from the factory farming of pigs may be responsible. Something I've been wondering about is runoff is responsible for the dead zone in the Gulf and it's harming fishermen out of New Orleans and other towns
fertilizer (Score:3, Insightful)
. I don't think anybody's going to hold a farm responsible for polluting the environment because they used manure for fertilizer, and the only difference between chemical fertilizers and manure is that the cheaper version is made of feces.
Actually I think that can be part of the solution. From what I understand most of the feces from the pig farms are either dumped or buried, though some gets swept away into waterways with rain. Allowing the feces to compost though it can then be used for fertilizer th
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Most of the methods used by agro-business are employed because they increase productivity. Because of this the US produces enough food to feed most of the world. Going back to methods a few hundred years old, on a large scale, would probably have some nasty consequences that most people don't think about.
Now, what we need to do is find something better to do with a
Re:No explanation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right...
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Re:No explanation? (Score:4, Informative)
Follow the link, it's a good article.
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In an environment of such poor scientific integrity, there's nothing wrong with a layperson hitting the books and forming their own theories. They're probably just as good as any so-called expert's.
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And hence, poor Max, your Flamebating.
Look, I'm as much a science junkie as the next guy, and I firmly believe that und
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"Experts" are just people too. People who've studied and lived something longer than the rest of us, but have no more skill at foreseeing the future than any of the rest of us.
They'll monitor and observe for a while, and figure out what's going on. And then likely have no idea how to change it, and it'll change on its own and do something else "unexpected".
That's the nature of
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The sky is not falling, despite what the linked image above might indicate.
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Like urinating on a bald eagle...
It's perfectly natural, guys.
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Summer lightning, thunder and nasty hailstorms here are quite impressive, especially when they happen all at once. Little kids freak out, especially the ones that are visiting from warmer climates and it's fun to watch their reactions. It's a look of true wonder and amazement.
what gets me about people's reactions to nature (Score:2)
I recently moved a few thousand kilometers westward and a Chinook Arch [wikipedia.org] looks quite ominous and threatening to those that haven't seen it before. It's just nature, though. I always find it amusing when eco-types freak out and fret over what are natural earth processes.
What gets me is when I read how there's a report on how an alligator or shark attacked someone or their dog in Florida. When a gator or shark attacks all of a sudden there's a swarm of panic about how there's man eating all
Oh Come On (Score:5, Interesting)
I live real close to this area, am on vacation in Lincoln City at the moment, and I'd like to say that when they say they have no explanations about this phenomenon you should not take that to mean that the annual upwelling of cold water from the bottom just off the continental shelf here is either news to anybody here or is a satisfactory explanation for what is going on here.
By the way, the part about the wind generating these currents, or currents anywhere, is wrong. Currents are generated by a combination of the earth's rotation, the uneven solar heating of the earth's surface and the underwater topologies of the world's oceans. Wind is better thought of as the atmospheric currents and the ocean current patterns clearly do NOT overlap the atmospheric currents.
OK, now, with that out of the way, the point is, nobody yet knows why everything is dead out there. Not you, Not Google, Not me, Not anybody - yet.
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Nuh-uh, man, it's global warming. Anyone who says it's not is a right-wing fascist who can just shut up! I bet Al Gore could tell us -- we need to get him to look at it. Come on, we can draft Al to lead the world to victory against the capitalists and SUV drivers. Then we'll execute them all, and in time life will return to the oceans!
Ok, now give me my 5 I
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As for the lack of oxygen, tha
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and claimed that the solution in this case was actually quite obvious:
Verity and other scientists who have researched similar changes worldwide say they can sum up the cause in a single word: people.
As more homes, condominiums, marinas and businesses are built on the coast, pollution increases in tidal creeks and estuaries. Treated sewage discharges and storm water runoff carry fertilizers
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Hi, my name is Lizzy Faire (Score:5, Funny)
Things that are truly important to humanity's survival will be preserved by market forces. Which means someone like Outback Steakhouse will take a genuine interest in their survival and will spend the money to stop these dead zones and prevent hypoxia/anoxia from happening.
If you really want to save the fish off of Oregon's coast, then put them on the menu.
[end right wing parody]
They are worth protecting. (Score:2)
These go for $3-$4/lb in the local stores.
As for putting things on the menu, the best item caught around here is Chinook , but very few around right now.
Alaska salmon is plentiful but local ocean caught chinook is usually over $10/lb.
Re:Hi, my name is Lizzy Faire (Score:4, Funny)
But we will never know for absolutely certain the cause of the hypoxia until Al Gore or Michael Moore make a movie about it. That being said, anyone not completely stupid, that is, anyone who watches CNN instead of FoxNews, knows that the CONSTITUTION SAYS that the Republicans killed all those poor fish. And they didn't even use all their parts, like the Indians would have done. They only killed them for their fur, the fascists.
[end left wing parody]
Hypoxia is a characteristic of hypoxia? (Score:5, Funny)
They found that levels [of dissolved oxygen] were 10 to 30 times lower than normal, down to 0.5 milliliters per liter, a characteristic of hypoxia.
In other news, having low levels of dissolved glucose in the bloodstream is a characteristic of hypoglycaemia; having lots of money is a characteristic of being rich; and a complete cessation of brain function is a characteristic of death.
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I thought it was a characteristic of a MySpace user? Or becoming US Defence Secretary.
Re:Hypoxia is a characteristic of hypoxia? (Score:5, Funny)
Why the rip on myspace users? They may not have our informed, moderated sci/tech discussion, but they do have girls there.
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I had a dream last night that I had an incomplete saber.
I knew, in the dream, that [i]real[/i] jedi's would have to make it themselves.
Now I have dreams abouts sigs!
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and a complete cessation of brain function is a characteristic of death
I thought it was a characteristic of a MySpace user? Or becoming US Defence Secretary.
Why the rip on myspace users? They may not have our informed, moderated sci/tech discussion, but they do have girls there."
All the underage girls on MySpace are really FBI agents.
Did
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What are these girls of which you speak?
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Of course, finding romance on slashdot would be a hell of a story. You don't happen to be in your twenties in central ohio... ?
Re:Hypoxia is a characteristic of hypoxia? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hypoxia is a characteristic of hypoxia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to a successful Roland Piquepaille slashdot bait. He's a master of re-explaining the basic. In this case, he's speaking down to the reader from his intellectual pulpit.
Seth
Re:Hypoxia is a characteristic of hypoxia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Try reading this site at -1 and you'll soon change this theory!
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oh they're dead all right... what better place for a zombie than where everyone has big brains and can't run more than ten feet without getting winded?
volcanism (Score:3, Insightful)
volcanic ridge/rift, most likely (Score:4, Informative)
This dead zone is "most likely caused by underwater volcanism along the Juan De Fuca Ridge, which is about 20% volcanic along its 500 mile length. Occassional volcanic eruptions occur along the Ridge (Rift) which can create gigantic megaplumes of hot mineral water. Could be there is very little oxygen in the plumes, it most likely would have reacted with the minerals, leaving dissolved oxygen at nil."
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It's pretty spooky when that happens on land though -- CO2 will gather in a depression, then some animal will wander through it and die, and then one preditor after another will be attracted into th
Gigantic crab (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to know more about these gigantic crab. Are they bigger than king crab? I love to eat crab legs.
What? You mean that it's the graveyard that's gigantic? Damn you, ambiguous English language!
Re:Gigantic crab (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Gigantic crab (Score:5, Funny)
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"Apply liberally, sniff and retreat."
Now why, I asked, would they need to tell you to get the hell away from the pet stain after sniffing it? Like you're going to hang out there, breathing in the sweet vapors?
Unfortunately, my dad didn't find it as funny, since he read it as "treat again", which of course was what they
How did these gigantic crabs die? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wording (Score:4)
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CSM or ZDNET - Which is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely the original article (at CSM) should be the one linked, and not to some warmed-over plagiarised rehash at ZDNet? Do the
Re:CSM or ZDNET - Which is it? (Score:5, Informative)
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No mystery - Polution (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
"This overloads the waters with nutrients and spawns large algae blooms. The algae sink, die, and decompose, in a process that sucks oxygen out of the water and the topmost layer of sediment on the bottom, where many worms and shellfish live."
Fosfate/nitrate (among others) --> Nutritions for algae --> No oxygen
The "mystery" is where the polution is coming from.
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The "mystery" is where the polution is coming from.
It is also possible the whales, or lack of them play a part. Would say 500 missing whales eat a lot of plankton and algae? This would mean there would not be as much to fall and rot.
Maybe oil from Alaska leaking from old rusty tankers.
Maybe someone saved some disposal costs and dropped in 50 barrels of toxic waste.
I have seen this on interior freshwater lakes where in 1968 the water was clear, fresh and loaded with large and small fish. In 1998 I wa
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It's really annoying how "nutrients" and "polution" can now apparently be used synonymously, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone. If a nutrient favors a worse-tasting species over a better-tasting species, then it's pollution? The same goes for calling CO2 pollution. You might as well call oxygen pollution. Let's just go ahead and say that every single molecule on the earth is a m
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This is a valid point, the word "pollution" is relative, in a similar way to the way the word "terrorist" depends on your point of view (if you a buying or selling cell phones for example).
Carbon Dioxide is a naturally occurring substance in the atmosphere, but the proportion of the atmosphere that it occupies has increased dramatically. The graph on this page [wikipedia.org] shows the measured changes, but to be fair the graph on the top doe
My scientific explaination... (Score:4, Funny)
That can't be right.... (Score:2)
My Aquarium (Score:5, Funny)
Other Mysterious Die Offs at CompUSA. (Score:2)
The area off Cape Perpetua on the central Oregon coast is now a gigantic crab and fish graveyard. It was first discovered in 2002,
I have noticed something similar next to the local mall, a gigantic device graveyard called CompUSA. It's downright spooky. The floor is covered with devices, some of which are outright broken, but all of which are dying in a money starved environment. Some people have pointed to DRM, others to vague notions of Monopoly, but the "experts" in the press seem to be stumped. A
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Popular Culprit? (Score:2, Insightful)
This type of premature conclusion is, I believe, very damaging to those who want to have global warming taken seriously by the mainstream public (ie. Me). Leaping to the popular conclusion with no reason other than it being popular to blame fr
conclusions conclusions (Score:2)
This type of premature conclusion is, I believe, very damaging to those who want to have global warming taken seriously by the mainstream public (ie. Me). Leaping to the popular conclusion with no reason other than it being popular to blame frankly makes me doubt the professionalism of the researchers involved.
Did you see where Jane Lubchenco says "the culprit may be global warming. To be sure, the jury is still out on that connection". That is not a conclusion, it's a hypothsis. She just reported on
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She leaped to her "Hypothesis" purely based on the facts
I don't see any leap, what I see is a statement. Never mind it says nothing about her taking a leap, she doesn't even say whether she believes it or believes something else. And scientists are supposed to take the facts they know and come up with a hypothesis, then try to prove or disprove the hypothesis. That is science.
FalconIt's just Roland the Plogger screwing up again (Score:5, Informative)
That's just a link to a Roland the Plogger blog, who doesn't understand the problem. Read the New York Times story [nytimes.com], which has important facts the Plogger missed, like the fact that this has been happening for the past five years. The local paper, the Register-Guard, has a good story [registerguard.com]. "On the way down, the camera lens illuminates a nighttime blizzard, a flurry of broken chunks of plankton called "marine snow." This is evidence of what caused this year's hypoxia - an onslaught of nutrients brought to shallow coastal waters by wind-driven currents, whose decomposing structures suck up available oxygen."
This is no mysterious dramatic event. It happens every year, but this year, it's worse than usual, possibly because ocean currents have shifted due to weather.
Thank you, Captain Obvious (Score:2)
Better late than never, but... (Score:2)
People (Score:2)
'nuff said.
Re:People (Score:5, Funny)
Joke --->
O
You --> -|-
/ \
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<diagram></diagram>
Green chips (Score:2)
Where the hell are we supposed to get our Soylent Green from if the oceans die?
Just wait until you see what those green chips are made from. Hope you like being a cannibal.
FalconRe:USA IS IGNORANT! (Score:5, Informative)
Thus the three most populous continents on earth are simply not concerned.
Re:USA IS IGNORANT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that the USA is blame free, far from it. But I am amazed at what they get blamed for these days.
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Erm. China and India aren't continents, nor is the United States of America. Also the US is not one of the most populous, I believe that the EU as a whole has almost double the population of the US.
Kyoto is a joke... (Score:2)
Seriously though. Kyoto was a dead letter and everybody knew it -- look at how Europe universally welched on their quotas after signing it ("Um, oops, turns out we would have devastated our economy to make that... well, can't be having that. Oh, bad Dubya bad, you're a convinient scapegoat!") About the only people really enthusiastic about adhering to it, as opposed to playing kissy-face with their domestic Green
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I have always wondered why people are so quick to accept the dire predictions of an economic model as gospel but are so slow to accept any prediction from a climate model, they are both mathematical models and the economic one is far less rigorous. Besides from what I hear on the other side of the Pacific, GWB has already devastated your economy with several trillion dollars of extra debt.
Kyoto failed because the US refused to get involved (yes I blame G
Re:It is the same with the Baltic sea. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the baltic we have a higher salt concentration in the bottom parts than nearer the surface (due to water runoff through all the rivers which empty out i the baltic). At the same time, the mouth of the baltic (e.g. the Danish straits) are shallow, usually only alloowing te surface water to freely exchange with the North sea (and hence the Atlantic). In most cases there is a weak outgowing current in the danish straits and only in special weather situations do salt and oxygen containing water enter the baltic.
The weather situations which may pump salt and oxygen into the baltic is large storms from the right direction and i recal readig that it is only about once every 2-3 years that that happens that significant amounts of salt water enters the deep parts of the baltic.
This phenomena (heavy salt rich water at the bottom, salt poor water at the surface) is also the same which makes the danish fjords vulnarable to hypoxia or anoxia (and incidently makes them nearly ideal for small submarines to operate in as a surface ship has no chance of hearing them through the thermo/hyalocline before they are close enough to launch torpedoes, which was the reason why the soviets took the danish navy serious durring the cold war).
There is alos other places where the geometry of the water basin results in natural anoxia (the black sea is i believe the largest). Similarly, in the geologic past, large costal water basins have been anoxic (as there is now oil there), so anoxic conditions is not by themselves some man made phenomena. It may be man made in the case in Oregon and in the case of the baltic, it surely does not help dumping all the polution from the rivers..
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
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There isn't any Agriculture or Heavy industry that could be responsible. Here's google map of the area, look for a river longer than 20 miles near
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I did not claim that the Oregon case is due to polution from rivers or river induced hyaloclines (as you correctly state, no large rivers feeding water to the affected areas). I only speculated that the Oregon case may be a result of human activity, altohugh natural upwelling may also result in the observed phenomena as others have pointed out (including the article..)
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
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Saying there are no long rivers in this area is of course true, but it is also misleading.
The Oregon Coast Range is one of very few temperate rain forests in the world. In the area around Cape Perpetua, the annual rainfall is 80 inches. All that water runs off to the ocean through those short rivers, as well as hundreds of smaller creeks that empty directly into the surf. Those short rivers, in the aggregate, move about as much water per year as the Willamette River, which drains the rest of western Orego
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The other thing is there have been multiple conflicting plans in Oregon with respect to stream management. The idea in the 80s was that fish need moving water or will get stuck. Now we know better, but it cost billions to implement the plan ODFW had to remove trees
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68 Inches in Newport.
And much more than that as you move inland. The Coast Range forces maritime air that has been at equilibrium with the Pacific Ocean for thousands of miles to rise from sea level at Newport to 2,000 - 3,000 feet in half a dozen miles. Most of the water gets dumped in the hills, not on the beaches and coves.
I agree that Oregon streambed management is a shambles. Hopefully we are now on the right track. But Bureau of Land Management and the other involved agencies have a pretty dismal t
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For the interested, take a look at google earth and find the east cost of Jutland (the peninsular north of Germa
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The Baltic sea also has the same issue. There are so many pollotants dumped into the sea than in couple tens of years we have totally dead sea in our hands.
The Aral Sea [8m.com] is already dead. In part because of runoff but mostly because of the Soviet policy of diverting all of the rivers that emptied into the Aral to farms on land that never should of been farmed to begin with.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
Paris Hilton must've been in the area.
(Yay for cheap shots!)
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It's not normal pollution either because the large populated sections of Oregon are all in the Columbia river basin, which is 150 miles+ north of the region. Newport is small coast town that is known because it used to hold Free Willy. The run off of the Snake and Columbia valleys, that is all the agriculture of Or
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Please see my other post about the rivers of this area. Basically, they are not as small in volume as you might think, since the basins they drain are temperate rainforests that receive 80+ inches of rain a year. Also this region is intensively logged using clearcut methods, and changes in the run-off after removal of the forest are probably happening. It is possible that the dead zone is caused by sylvicultural practices.
Many locals in the area believe that logging practices destroyed the salmon fishery
El Nino (Score:2)
I wonder if this is like the die-off that everybody was horrified about in the early 90's. Turned out it was El Nino altering currents and everything went back to normal a year later
If you read the article you should of seen where they ruled out El Nino:
It's pretty clear El Niño is not implicated, says Thomas Powell, a UC-Berkeley oceanographer. But, he continues, there may be other large-scale changes in average atmospheric conditions that typically occur every 30 years.
Falcon
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