Panama’s seasonal upwelling collapsed in 2025, linked to reduced winds. The event signals risks for fisheries and climate-sensitive ocean processes.
The annual phenomenon of upwelling in the Gulf of Panama failed to occur in 2025 for the first time on record. A team of scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) linked the disruption to weakened trade winds.
The finding underscores how changes in climate can directly affect essential ocean processes and the coastal populations that depend on them.
Seasonal dynamics of upwelling
Each year during Central America’s dry season (typically December through April), northern trade winds trigger upwelling in the Gulf of Panama. This process brings cold, nutrient-rich waters from deep in the ocean to the surface, sustaining productive fisheries and shielding coral reefs from heat stress. The rising cool waters also keep the Pacific coast of Panama noticeably cooler during the region’s “summer” vacation months.
STRI researchers have monitored this seasonal cycle for more than four decades, documenting its consistent recurrence between January and April. In 2025, however, the process did not take place, marking the first observed failure. As a result, expected temperature declines and productivity increases were significantly reduced.
In a study published in PNAS, the team concluded that a sharp weakening of wind patterns was the likely driver of this unprecedented event. The results reveal how climate instability can disrupt long-standing oceanic systems that have supported coastal fisheries for millennia. Additional investigation is needed to pinpoint the exact mechanisms and assess the potential long-term impacts on marine resources.
Growing vulnerability of tropical systems
This finding highlights the growing vulnerability of tropical upwelling systems, which, despite their enormous ecological and socioeconomic importance, remain poorly monitored. It also underscores the urgency of strengthening ocean-climate observation and prediction capabilities in the planet’s tropical regions.
This result marks one of the first major outcomes of the collaboration between the S/Y Eugen Seibold research vessel from the Max Planck Institute and STRI.
Reference: “Unprecedented suppression of Panama’s Pacific upwelling in 2025” by Aaron O’Dea, Andrew J. Sellers, Carmen Pérez-Medina, Javier Pardo Díaz, Alexandra Guzmán Bloise, Christopher Pöhlker, Michał T. Chiliński, Hedy M. Aardema, Jonathan D. Cybulski, Lena Heins, Steven R. Paton, Hans A. Slagter, Ralf Schiebel and Gerald H. Haug, 2 September 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2512056122
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105 Comments
Just make the oceans colder ,its easy
HAARP is warming waters to build a narrative. The Smithsonian is tool of the Marxist Democrats. Can’t believe anything attached to them.
genuine question…are you an idiot?
Genuine answer: he’s closer to reality than a Klimate Kook like you.
Google panama city pollution and tell me it has something to do with wind. Smh, you call yourself scientists.
Yup! You hit the nail on the head. It’s not ‘climate change’ it’s ‘climate control’.
Until you spend time there you don’t know about the huge difference between the Pacific and Atlantic there Huge tides on Pac side and very little on the other and the Atl water is warmer I never knew about the upwelling
Good question.
So was there no life 40 years ago?
People like you need help.
I am an atmospheric ecologist of 60 years. The ocean temperature changes have passed the tipping point with algae explosions occurring world wide. Corresponding land temperatures are increasing exponentially. Climate refugees are exploding as well as climate wars. Immediate world wide action must be taken on a scale that dwarfs efforts such as in WW2. We all have to do with rationing and major changes.
At last! Someone who knows what they’re talking about!
What does it mean for us as a planet “algae explosions”
Recent articles have also explained the dire conditions of overuse of fresh water. The earth’s highest populated citizenry is decimating underground aquifers. This is unsustainable. It also adds to sea level rise as it is transferred by rivers that receive sewage treatment effluent from our homes and from industrial uses.
Mabey
We should start by fixing the three nuclear meltdowns that’s been dumping hot nuclear water in the Pacific since 2011.
Respect 🫡
Prove it y
Agreed!
I grew up in Alaska and when I was a kid, we would have two feet of snow on the ground by Halloween. By the time I graduated from highschool, we were lucky to have snow by Thanksgiving. I recent years, they have been forced to run the snow makers at the local ski area full time to be able to open the slopes. You can be a climate denier or a climate advocate and it doesnt matter. The facts are that just our existence on this earth has/is changing the weather patterns worldwide and they continue to deteriorate. That fact is undeniable. Now, you can choose to try and slow that process by teaming up with the millions of people who are trying to combat or at least slow the inevitable, or you can continue to stick your head in the sand and claim is a hoax and watch it happen to you in real time – like the dinosaurs did. Hey, where is old T- rex? Havent seen him around in a while.
It’s all been a grift. A whole lot of people have become rich, power has become more centralized and the average person is poorer. Meanwhile, the east has ensured that any reductions in our side have at least doubled on theirs. So despite trillions spent, we will still have zero impact. The global ‘right’ will be blamed for not giving them enough power or money. This is all a game much larger than you realize.
Winters where I live have changed as well; there’s no denying the fact that the climate is changing. The human existence may very well have an impact on it; however, I think it’s very egotistical of the science community and the population in general, to think that human race, can stop the continual evolution of the climate on earth. There is scientific proof that it has been heating and cooling for millions of years. We’re living in an Interglacial Ice Age, and some scientists theorize that if it weren’t for global warming, we would be heading into an ice age that may be just as dangerous.
So the human made polution kill Mr. T Rex? Climate change in inevitable, its been changing since the planet was formed. I prefer global warming to global cooling, plants grow in warm, generate O2 from CO2 and all us non TRex can eat. With global cooling plants die and so do we.
What astute comments! Try being just a bit cerebral please.
Yup! You hit the nail on the head. It’s not ‘climate change’ , it’s ‘climate control’.
LMAO What a silly comment
In today’s day and age cat the govern ent control the weather?
Sure, we could just throw a ton of ice into the oceans or set up some really big fans. Lol
That’s actually happening. Tons and tons of ice falls into the oceans every day.
Perhaps, help from human beings can help the deep churning of the ocean’s waters, in this, usually natural yearly process, continue to create lost biodiversity. With what most call, the “human made global warming”, don’t you think we should clean up, what we’ve screwed up?
BINGO!!!
Mr Deb is right: It’s our mess we’ve made, so we need to take accountability and responsibility and clean up our mess
And why do you suppose that is?
Hahaha, yes. Fans. Only Fans. That’s the only answer those moronoids know. It’s so hard for them to accept any evidence contrary to their belief system.
The amount of idiocy in the comment section is utterly depressing, and the exact reason nothing will change and we will continue to destroy everything we have left. We’re all on a one way trip thanks to you morons. I hope you live long enough to feel the dread weight of your failures as you watch your children and grandchildren pay the price.
Never have I seen a more simply put and undeniable argument than XKCD comic #1732. If you can honestly read that whole thing and still not see that the problem is us then you are lost.
Right just drag an iceberg down there!
95% of all climate scientist have the same belief’s as the people and company’s that finance their work.
About 90 miles below and to the right of Greenland. Atlantic deep ocean salinity needs to be increased, in a controlled manner to offset glacial melt. it will reestablish the amoc conveyor belt system and keep Europe from becoming an uninhabitable desert by 2065
Like “Operation Salt 🧂 Shaker” in “50 Degrees Below”, by Kim Stanley Robinson!
In 2020 all factories shut down almost world wide . The air hasn’t been that clean since before the industrial revolution. temperatures cooled globally.
I believe what 30yrs ago we would all be gone by now. Now we get another 40yrs of fake predictions and green energy corruption. Gotta generate revenue through fear.
20 years ago College students at GW told me in 5 years Florida would be underwater due to global warming. In the last five years I have learned that the Glaciers have been melting for 150 years. We have no idea how this planet evolves, Fear God, because he created the planet and us. Only He knows what is really happening on the grand scale of his planet.
60 years ago someone who fears God told he would end the world in two weeks.
I definitely fear God and what he can do to us and this planet
I don’t fear imaginary sky fairies. I fear what ignorant humans can do to the fragile biosphere we live in.
I follow what the smart people believe. If the oceans are rising, the storms along the coastal areas are becoming worse, then how come insurance companies, banks and other companies still continue to finance and insure projects along the coast lines. They have the exact same data as everyone else.
Do you love your children and Grandchildren ? If you do then you will wake up to a simple fact . If you keep poisoning a living system be it a human , Plant or Biosphere you will eventually kill it . Humans pollute almost everything they touch it’s a fact you know it I know it , it’s just what we do . It’s simply not sustainable in any way . We are chemically poisoning our planet . But let’s not get there if I’m wrong , nothing happens the world goes on and life continues. But if you are wrong , well it’s game over for Earth and all of our descendants. We kill our home .
2065 now. 40yrs more to generate revenue through fear for the green energy consumption.
Easy on the Kool-Aid Buddy
I live in Australia, we have the largest Coral reef system in the world on the east coast we have The Great Barrier Reef located on the Coral sea of eastern seaboard of Australia due to climate change significantly Large parts of the reef have undergone coral bleaching due the warmer waters we are monitoring the reef but with little action been done on the global network of climate change and lowering our admissions of green house gases and our carbon footprint we will risk losing these amazing living superstructures for generations to come due to lack of action and tackling the main issues driving up warmer waters our government is invested in supporting the reefs health but the world has to act to save all our Coral reef species across the Pacific Ocean and indian ocean reefs or lose the marine environments for ever due to research we can help sustain coral bleaching due to factors of making the Coral more resistant to warmer temperatures our great barrier Reef is a world heritage site and we risk losing its heritage status amongst the word due to climate change more research needs to be done on warmer global waters across our oceans for the health of the fisheries and reef structures of the planet.
Your period button looks like this – .
Heath doesn’t get periods.
@Heath Lyon: The dumb climate change deniers will claim that 5G chips in the vaccines excreted through urine is causing coral bleaching. The mental gymnastics they go through to deny what can easily be observed is funny and pathetic at the same time.
To late to save the Great Barrier Reef. I have been diving there for 60 years. Watched it dying. Already half gone since records began. If ALL weapons costs were diverted immediately to saving the environment, we might have a chance. 2026 and 2027 will see extreme heat waves, extreme weather, killiing millions. Already killing hundreds of thousands. Just add it up. Stop hiding from the truth. The world got together to stop the Nazis. We can get together again to stop ourselves. Just try!
That’s impossible
Humans can do something about it. Look around what humans can do it amazing…
Climate Alarmist are so funny. We will hit a 40 year cold period soon. It’s called a solar minium. We had been experiencing a solar maximum for the last 40.
Are you of the opinion that every climate scientist isn’t in fact a scientist, and is instead, an alarmist? The climate won’t just get warmer and warmer. It will get warmer, and the effects of that increased heat will result in colder periods. The change is somewhat elliptical. Which is to say that temps will swing out toward the warmer and warmer side and then further toward colder and colder. Until one day it doesn’t come back. It will never end or be stuck in a warmer state, but rather in a cold state, known as an ice age. These processes usually take extremely long periods of time and should be impossible for a human to notice in their lifetime. But here we are with records being broken year after year, and things happening and/or not happening that are out of the norm. You don’t have to be very old to know that not too long ago, it took much longer to become sunburnt. Now, you can get burnt inside of a half an hour. These changes are not coincidental. Not liking them or not liking who speaks about them, doesn’t make them not factual. It’s unfortunate that humans need to evolve and take responsibility, but that too, is a fact.
Your old. That is why you burn faster , that and depending on where you live you are exposed to so fricken many poisons aimed at shortening your life, including vaccines that do have adverse effects on your skin. I may be bias aganst every single narrative pushed by my government( America) but, yeah they are full of it and are great at psyops . Which I belive you to be an obvious victim of. But whatevs . Not the best life here on the red pill side. I m sure you will be much happier over there .
People who don’t believe anything aren’t living in reality.
Who said God had a penis
I think we should worry about mother earth because all life here depends on procreation.
Your old. That is why you burn faster , that and depending on where you live you are exposed to so fricken many poisons aimed at shortening your life, including vaccines that do have adverse effects on your skin. I may be bias aganst every single narrative pushed by my government( America) but, yeah they are full of it and are great at psyops . Which I belive you to be an obvious victim of. But whatevs . Not the best life here on the red pill side. I m sure you will be much happier over there. Blue piller
You missed your meds commie, all BS, climate wackos are all the same it’s a religion of lies, were the only solution to fix it is more communism refuse resist people!
Your source please.
You can’t prove a thing this says is or isn’t happening.
Robert Kalani Foxworthy – the kind of name that Nigerian fake-news bots paid by Russia, think sounds “western”.
I’m the problem, it’s me. My pronouns are we and us
Yes!
You’re pretty convincing. I believe you.
You are basing you conclusions on 4 decades of data in a certain area and short of a great deal of possibly missing factors.
This may actually always happen when certain other natural things happen in the Pacific.
Without much more long term data you are mostly guessing.
Numbers are changed to fit every situation in the world of fake climate science. The earth was predicated to be completely uninhabitable as of now. Scenarios have been debunked year after year in order to get climate crazies more money to make more fake results. In the past 150yrs. Oceans have been estimated to have risen 6″, a guess. Considering that oceans are in perpetual motion.
There is no such thing as perpetual motion on earth. Eventually all things will cease to exsist.
Wow reading the ridiculous number of people who really believe climate change is either a hoax or is a Democrat plan to “weaken the west” has pretty much stolen what little hope I had left for this country. You people are all so completely lost. Will more of you switch from “hoax” to “Democrats CoNtRoL tHe WeAThER!!” as the actual symptoms of climate change becomes more extreme and literally undeniable?
Well I suppose we should just be good little automatons and line up for our c40 cities
Right? I am also in awe with the amount of climate change deniers. Where did these people escaped from? Is there a factory of brain damaged people somewhere in the US??
I honestly haven’t seen nowhere near so much nonsense on Europe, these have to be MAGA people, for sure.
seriously…you’re all a waste of human flesh
Climate change is a normal cycle the world gone through for billions of years. Pretending it’s a new phenomenon and that it’s man made is foolish.
Climate change is real, it’s happening, but humans aren’t causing it. We have been in an ice age, it’s supposed to get warmer, and the warmer it gets, the faster it warms.
We should stop cutting down our forests though. They clean the air of our pollution. And we should stop expanding city’s. They are not appropriate habitats for any other organism. God gave us the earth and the animals and told us to care for everything, and we are not. If you wonder why he has not returned, it’s because he gave up on us. And no one is going to heaven either. He gave us a paradise and we are destroying it, do you think he’s going to let you destroy his home as well? Nope.