Just weak winds are able to trigger large marine heatwaves - here one example in the southwest Indian Ocean in 2023 It seems like that wind variability is intensifying in the oceans with exceptionally weak winds emerging as a signal of global warming

Shows the patchy marine heatwave in spring in the Southwest Indian Ocean in 2023 When I went through the coastlines and studies extreme algae blooms the most intense blooms had been caused by exceptional weak surface winds which emerged as a kind of signal with all these different blooms. As it seems winds are a meta control in the system and their role has been underestimated. You only see what winds do inf they cease to blow... Here the abstract: This study provides a dynamical diagnostic analysis of the marine heatwaves that occurred in the southwest tropical Indian Ocean (SWTIO) during March and April 2023. These events are notable because they occurred following a La Niña winter, a phase typically associated with negative sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in this region. Given that observations failed to show the deepening of the thermocline, the mechanism of downwelling Rossby waves deepening the thermocline—often used to explain SWTIO warming during El Niño decay phases—is inapplicable here. Mixed layer heat budget analysis indicates that the warming was primarily driven by the surface heat flux term, which reached its maximum value in 2023 over the 1993–2025 period. The critical driver was the dual thermodynamic effect induced by the unprecedentedly weak surface wind speeds, which resulted in extraordinary heat absorption via suppressed latent heat loss and a shallow mixed layer depth due to weakened vertical mixing. The synergy of the dual thermodynamic effect concentrated the anomalous surface heat flux within an exceptionally thin surface layer, ultimately triggering the unprecedented SST warming in the spring of 2023. "Marine heatwaves in the Southwest tropical Indian Ocean during spring 2023"; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-026-01481-x