May 7, 2026 — From a small building at the end of the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier in La Jolla, aquarist Melissa Torres reels in a bucket with ocean surface water and looks at a digital thermometer — the same way researchers have taken daily measurements of ocean temperatures from the pier over the past 100 years.
On this recent Monday, the temperature is 18.95 degrees Celsius, or 66 degrees Fahrenheit.
“That’s warm,” said Torres. “Yesterday was 17.97 (degrees Celsius). But, yes, usually, we like to see around 16.”
Torres said the average ocean surface temperature off the La Jolla coast is about 61 degrees Fahrenheit. But for months, temperatures all along the West Coast have risen 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. They’ve also been warmer deep below the surface.
Now, scientists are monitoring a separate heat wave that is forming hundreds of miles off the Pacific coast. That one is part of a pattern observed over the last decade.
“Every year we seem to be getting these heat waves that start way offshore about this time of year, get bigger and get to the coast and impact us, typically get us in the late summer and fall,” said Leising. “That does seem to be something that is kind of the new normal ever since the blob.”
He’s monitoring whether the two marine heat waves will merge in the late summer or fall.