Heat Wave Warms the Ocean Waters : Climate: How hot is it? Well, it’s been so hot that the Pacific is considerably warmer, officials say. But you won’t hear any complaints from beach-goers.

While the heat wave turns us into limp, damp creatures that crawl between work and home, it is also doing something a little less predictable: It is warming up the ocean.

Lifeguards say the past week’s persistent record-breaking heat has boosted sea temperatures off the county coast into the middle and high 70s, in some places more than 10 degrees above normal. Oceanographers and meteorologists said the warm currents may be coming from off the Baja California coast, where there is hot, humid tropical weather associated with a hurricane and a tropical storm.

The enticingly warm waters are a treat for those fortunate enough to escape to the beaches, but they bring extra work for lifeguards, who must be even more vigilant in monitoring the big crowds.

Surface water temperatures are as high as 79 degrees, a mark recorded Saturday by a city lifeguard boat about 100 yards off Corona del Mar State Beach. Even temperatures well below the surface, where the water is generally cooler, are in the mid-70s, lifeguards said.

Clinton Winant, director of the Center for Coastal Studies at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, said temperatures normally hover around 68 degrees at the water’s surface this time of year, and they slide to about 60 degrees at depths of about 15 feet. That is what made Winant term “amazing” the last couple of days’ readings of 73 to 76 off the Newport Beach pier at a depth of about 15 feet.

“It’s rare that the warmth can penetrate that deep into the water,” Winant said.

Logan Lockabey, a supervisor with U.S. Ocean Safety, a private firm that contracts with Orange County to provide lifeguard services on county beaches, said temperatures at the three-foot-deep level, about 100 yards offshore, rose to 72 and 73 degrees last week and pushed up to 76 degrees at beaches in South Laguna, Capistrano and Dana Point.

Gordon C. Reed, a marine safety officer with Newport Beach’s lifeguards, said the water temperatures remind him of the El Nino weather pattern that heated ocean waters in 1983, when the sea produced mercury readings of 70 to 75 degrees.

“We’ve got a lot of those same things happening now,” he said. “Warm water temperatures, heat, humidity, thunderstorms.”

But Winant cautioned that it is too early to pin the abnormally high water temperatures on a “long-term phenomenon” such as El Nino. He said he suspects that a hurricane off the coast of Baja California, and another tropical weather system in the same area, are to blame.

Southerly winds produced by those weather systems can account for the warming of the waters, Winant said. When the wind blows toward the north over the ocean, he said, it drags the top layer of the water with it and pushes it onto the coast. The result is that the uppermost, warmest layer of water piles up on the shore.

Rea Strange, a private oceanography and meteorology consultant in Montecito, believes that the water temperature changes are the result of the Davidson effect, a pattern of warm currents making inroads north from Baja. That would also account for the tropical storm activity in that area, he said.

Lt. John Blauer of the Newport Beach Marine Safety Department said the combination of searing temperatures, few night and morning clouds and only faint winds has allowed the sun to bake the still water.

“It’s just like leaving a glass of water on your roof,” he said.

But those on the beaches seemed to be enjoying it.

“The water is very nice, very pleasant,” Reed said. “People don’t have a bit of hesitation before going in.”

Lockabey, in Laguna, agreed.

“A lot of people sit around the beach and don’t go in when the water’s colder,” he said. “But now everyone’s in.”

Heating of Coastal Waters 1. Southerly winds blow over the ocean, dragging the top layer of water with them. 2. As the winds push the water north, the uppermost, warmest layer of water piles up on shore. Source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography