1 / 16

Jerome Fiechter Ocean Sciences Department University of California, Santa Cruz

Seasonal and Interannual Ecosystem Variability in the Coastal Gulf of Alaska. Jerome Fiechter Ocean Sciences Department University of California, Santa Cruz ROMS Workshop, Grenoble, 6-8 October 2008. Collaborators. Andy Moore – University of California, Santa Cruz

neva
Download Presentation

Jerome Fiechter Ocean Sciences Department University of California, Santa Cruz

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Seasonal and Interannual Ecosystem Variability in the Coastal Gulf of Alaska Jerome Fiechter Ocean Sciences Department University of California, Santa Cruz ROMS Workshop, Grenoble, 6-8 October 2008

  2. Collaborators Andy Moore – University of California, Santa Cruz Chris Edwards – University of California, Santa Cruz Ken Bruland – University of California, Santa Cruz Manu Di Lorenzo – Georgia Institute of Technology Zack Powell – University of California, Berkeley Al Hermann – NOAA / PMEL Enrique Curchitser – Rutgers University Hernan Arango – Rutgers University Kate Hedstrom – ARSRC, Fairbanks

  3. Outline • Physical/biological properties of Coastal Gulf of Alaska (CGOA) • Ocean circulation, ecosystem, and iron limitation models • Seasonal and interannual ecosystem variability (EOFs) • Summary

  4. CGOA Physical and Biological Properties • Physical Variability • Downwelling-favorable wind regime (Stabeno et al., 2004) • AS intrinsic mesoscale variability (Combes and Di Lorenzo, 2007) • Anticyclonic (Yakutat) eddy passages (Okkonen et al., 2003) • Biological Variability • CGOA: high-productivity shelf, fisheries • Subarctic Gyre: HNLC region (Lam et al., 2006) • Iron limitation on primary production (Strom et al., 2006) • Interannual Variability • 1997-1998 El Niño; 1999 La Niña • 1999 NEP “Cold” Regime Shift (Peterson and Schwing, 2003) • 2002 NEP Subsurface Cold Event (Curchitser et al., 2005)

  5. Ocean Circulation Model: CGOA-ROMS • ROMS: ~ 10 km horizontal resolution, 42 sigma levels • One-way offline nesting with North East Pacific ROMS • Monthly mean atmospheric and open boundary forcing • 5-year simulation (1998 through 2002)

  6. Lower Trophic Level Ecosystem Model • NEMURO: 11 components; 83 parameters (Kishi et al., 2007) PS: Nano P PL: Diatoms ZS: Ciliates ZL: Copepods ZP: Krill Fe Strom et al., 2007 Iron-limited phytop. growth (Fiechter et al., 2008)

  7. Surface Chlorophyll and Nutrients: Seaward Line, 2001 NEMURO-Fe (x) GLOBEC in situ (squares)

  8. Surface Chlorophyll: NEMURO-Fe vs. SeaWiFS SeaWiFS NEMURO SeaWiFS NEMURO SeaWiFS NEMURO SeaWiFS NEMURO SeaWiFS NEMURO

  9. Surface Chlorophyll EOFs: NEMURO-Fe vs. SeaWiFS

  10. Surface Chlorophyll EOFs: Diatoms vs. Nanophytop.

  11. Sea Surface Height and Eddy Kinetic Energy EOFs

  12. Alongshore Wind Stress and Wind Stress Curl EOFs

  13. Spring Bloom Variability and Winter Ekman Pumping

  14. Wind Stress Curl, Ekman Pumping, Nutrient Upwelling

  15. Aleutian Low Classification (Bering Sea Winter Climate) (Split Center Pattern) Sea level pressure (hPa) Rodionov et al., 2005 (La Niña) (El Niño)

  16. Summary • Ecosystem model reproduces chlorophyll seasonal cycle and interannual variability, but underestimates fall bloom • Ecosystem model reproduces phytoplankton community structure (diatoms on shelf and nanophytoplankton offshore) • Seasonal cycle and interannual variability account for 80% of explained variance in model and 40% in observations • Spring bloom interannual variability correlated with winter Ekman pumping (i.e., wind stress curl) in northern CGOA • Connection to Aleutian Low variability in North Pacific?

More Related