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AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Keywords

  • North Pacific Ocean climate
  • salinity and nutrient variability
  • upwelling and ecosystems

Index Terms

  • Global Change: Climate variability
  • Oceanography: General: Climate and interannual variability
  • Oceanography: General: Coastal processes
  • Oceanography: Physical: Decadal ocean variability
  • Oceanography: Physical: Eastern boundary currents

Abstract

North Pacific Gyre Oscillation links ocean climate and ecosystem change

E. Di Lorenzo

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

N. Schneider

International Pacific Research Center and Department of Oceanography, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

K. M. Cobb

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

P. J. S. Franks

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA

K. Chhak

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

A. J. Miller

CASPO Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA

J. C. McWilliams

Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA

S. J. Bograd

Southwest Fisheries Science Center, NMFS, NOAA, Pacific Grove, California, USA

H. Arango

Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

E. Curchitser

Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

T. M. Powell

Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA

P. Rivière

LEMAR, IUEM Thechnopole Brest-Iroise, Plouzane, France

Decadal fluctuations in salinity, nutrients, chlorophyll, a variety of zooplankton taxa, and fish stocks in the Northeast Pacific are often poorly correlated with the most widely-used index of large-scale climate variability in the region - the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). We define a new pattern of climate change, the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO) and show that its variability is significantly correlated with previously unexplained fluctuations of salinity, nutrients and chlorophyll. Fluctuations in the NPGO are driven by regional and basin-scale variations in wind-driven upwelling and horizontal advection – the fundamental processes controlling salinity and nutrient concentrations. Nutrient fluctuations drive concomitant changes in phytoplankton concentrations, and may force similar variability in higher trophic levels. The NPGO thus provides a strong indicator of fluctuations in the mechanisms driving planktonic ecosystem dynamics. The NPGO pattern extends beyond the North Pacific and is part of a global-scale mode of climate variability that is evident in global sea level trends and sea surface temperature. Therefore the amplification of the NPGO variance found in observations and in global warming simulations implies that the NPGO may play an increasingly important role in forcing global-scale decadal changes in marine ecosystems.

Received 29 November 2007; accepted 19 February 2008; published 30 April 2008.

Citation: Di Lorenzo, E., et al. (2008), North Pacific Gyre Oscillation links ocean climate and ecosystem change, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L08607, doi:10.1029/2007GL032838.

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