On Wednesday, August 1, researchers recorded the highest reading they’ve in the pier’s history: 78.6 degrees.
For over a century, UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography has been recording the sea surface temperature of the ocean off Scripps Pier in La Jolla. On Wednesday, August 1, researchers recorded the highest reading in the pier’s history.
“Yesterday, Scripps researchers logged the warmest sea-surface temperature at Scripps Pier since records began in August 1916,” Scripps Institution of Oceanography wrote on Twitter. “The record temp—78.6 ℉—is the highest in 102 years of measurements.” Up until now, the record was from a day back in 1931, when the ocean temperature hit 78.4 degrees.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography started recording sea surface temperatures back in August of 1916 as part of their research. According to Daniel Rudnick, an oceanographer with the Institute, temperatures along the San Diego County coast have been above average for a few months now, which is a little odd. Since this isn’t an El Nino year, the ocean should be a little cooler than average. “Southern California coastal waters have been anomalously warm since the beginning of 2014 when we experienced a marine heatwave,” Rudnick told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “This event was popularly known as ‘the blob.’”
One year later, in 2015, one of the strongest El Ninos in years occurred. The ocean continued its warming pattern and hasn’t dropped much since. “We had one of the strongest El Ninos of the last few decades and the local ocean continued warming,” Rudnick continued. “Since then SoCal waters are still anomalously warm — that is the water has not returned to temperatures that were normal in the previous seven years.”
