Drivers and impacts of the most extreme marine heatwaves events.

Prolonged high-temperature extreme events in the ocean, marine heatwaves, can have severe and long-lasting impacts on marine ecosystems, fisheries and associated services. This study applies a marine heatwave framework to analyse a global sea surface temperature product and identify the most extreme events, based on their intensity, duration and spatial extent. Many of these events have yet to be described in terms of their physical attributes, generation mechanisms, or ecological impacts.

A global assessment of marine heatwaves and their drivers.

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) can cause devastating impacts to marine life. Despite the serious consequences of MHWs, our understanding of their drivers is largely based on isolated case studies rather than any systematic unifying assessment. Here we provide the first global assessment under a consistent framework by combining a confidence assessment of the historical refereed literature from 1950 to February 2016, together with the analysis of MHWs determined from daily satellite sea surface temperatures from 1982-2016, to identify the important local processes, large-scale climate modes and teleconnections that are associated with MHWs regionally.

Longer and more frequent marine heatwaves over the past century.

Heatwaves are important climatic extremes in atmospheric and oceanic systems that can have devastating and long-term impacts on ecosystems, with subsequent socioeconomic consequences. Recent prominent marine heatwaves have attracted considerable scientific and public interest. Despite this, a comprehensive assessment of how these ocean temperature extremes have been changing globally is missing.

Response to Comments on "Slow adaptation in the face of rapid warming leads to collapse of the Gulf of Maine cod fishery".

Palmer et al and Swain et al suggest that our "extra mortality" time series is spurious. In response, we show that including temperature-dependent mortality improves abundance estimates and that warming waters reduce growth rates in Gulf of Maine cod. Far from being spurious, temperature effects on this stock are clear, and continuing to ignore them puts the stock in jeopardy.