OS51C-01
Anomalous Ocean Warming off the U.S. West Coast in 2014 and its Impacts on Marine Ecosystem and Seabird

Friday, 18 December 2015: 08:00
3009 (Moscone West)
Yi Chao1, John D Farrara1, Eric Bjorkstedt2, Wendy Enright3, Jennifer L. Fisher4 and William T Peterson5, (1)Remote Sensing Solutions, Inc., Pasadena, CA, United States, (2)Fisheries Ecology Division, SWFSC, NMFS, NOAA, Humboldt, CA, United States, (3)City of San Diego Ocean Monitoring Program, San Diego, CA, United States, (4)Oregon State University, Newport, OR, United States, (5)NOAA, Newport, OR, United States
Abstract:
Exceptionally warm ocean temperatures developed across a wide area off the U.S. west coast in 2014. Observations from a suite of platforms (e.g., ship, mooring, glider) were used to document this anomalous warming. Positive heat content anomalies approaching 109 Joules occurred at a number of locations along the coast for much of the latter half of 2014. Spatially, the warming manifested itself strongly in the two leading modes of variability in the heat content in the extra-tropical eastern Pacific. One mode represents the coastal warming from late 2014 to early 2015, while the other mode resembles the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) peaking from late 2013 to early 2014. Lagged correlations between the mooring temperature in Monterey Bay and satellite sea surface height suggest that the coastal warming was associated with the warming over a much larger region in the northeast Pacific Ocean probably due to anomalous atmospheric heating. Impacts of this U.S. west coastal warming on the marine ecosystem and seabird will be described.
Previous Abstract | Next Abstract >>