scholarly journals Breeding seabirds increase foraging range in response to an extreme marine heatwave

2020 ◽  
Vol 646 ◽  
pp. 161-173
Author(s):  
OE Osborne ◽  
PD O’Hara ◽  
S Whelan ◽  
P Zandbergen ◽  
SA Hatch ◽  
...  

Marine heatwaves are increasing in frequency and can disrupt marine ecosystems non-linearly. In this study, we examined the effect of the North Pacific warming event of 2014, the largest long-term sea surface anomaly on record, on black-legged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla foraging trips before, during, and after the event. We assessed foraging trip characteristics (trip distance and duration), the dispersal of foraging locations, and the persistence of foraging areas within and among years. Foraging trip characteristics, foraging area size, and location varied from year to year. Kittiwake foraging was more dispersed, direct, and farther from the colony in years immediately after and during the warming event. A third of the foraging area used pre-heatwave (2012) was important in subsequent years, which indicates that this area was, and may still be, a perennial foraging hot spot. During the chick-rearing stage, black-legged kittiwakes increased their speed and reduced the proportion of resting compared to the incubation stage. We conclude that marine heatwaves may have a strong impact on seabird foraging, extending foraging ranges, and that those impacts may be nonlinear with a strong lag.

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (16) ◽  
pp. 6123-6136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolan Gan ◽  
Lixin Wu

Abstract In this study, a lagged maximum covariance analysis (MCA) of the wintertime storm-track and sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies derived from the reanalysis datasets shows significant seasonal and long-term relationships between storm tracks and SST variations in the North Pacific. At seasonal time scales, it is found that the midlatitude warm (cold) SST anomalies in the preceding fall, which are expected to change the tropospheric baroclinicity, can significantly reduce (enhance) the storm-track activities in early winter. The storm-track response pattern, however, is in sharp contrast to the forcing pattern, with warm (cold) SST anomalies in the western–central North Pacific corresponding to a poleward (equatorward) shift of storm tracks. At interannual-to-decadal time scales, it is found that the wintertime SST and storm-track anomalies are mutually reinforced up to 3 yr, which is characterized by PDO-like SST anomalies with warming in the western–central domain coupled with basin-scale positive storm-track anomalies extending along 50°N.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 388
Author(s):  
Hao Cheng ◽  
Liang Sun ◽  
Jiagen Li

The extraction of physical information about the subsurface ocean from surface information obtained from satellite measurements is both important and challenging. We introduce a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) method to determine the subsurface temperature of the North Pacific Ocean by selecting the optimum input combination of sea surface parameters obtained from satellite measurements. In addition to sea surface height (SSH), sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface salinity (SSS) and sea surface wind (SSW), we also included the sea surface velocity (SSV) as a new component in our study. This allowed us to partially resolve the non-linear subsurface dynamics associated with advection, which improved the estimated results, especially in regions with strong currents. The accuracy of the estimated results was verified with reprocessed observational datasets. Our results show that the BPNN model can accurately estimate the subsurface (upper 1000 m) temperature of the North Pacific Ocean. The corresponding mean square errors were 0.868 and 0.802 using four (SSH, SST, SSS and SSW) and five (SSH, SST, SSS, SSW and SSV) input parameters and the average coefficients of determination were 0.952 and 0.967, respectively. The input of the SSV in addition to the SSH, SST, SSS and SSW therefore has a positive impact on the BPNN model and helps to improve the accuracy of the estimation. This study provides important technical support for retrieving thermal information about the ocean interior from surface satellite remote sensing observations, which will help to expand the scope of satellite measurements of the ocean.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 752
Author(s):  
Liu ◽  
Bao ◽  
Bao

Chinese pine (Pinus tabulaeformis Carr.) plays an important role in maintaining ecosystem health and stability in western Liaoning Province and the southern Horqin sand land, Northeast China, with benefits including sand fixation and soil erosion. In the context of climate change, developing a better understanding of the relationship between climate factors and growth rates of this species will be extremely valuable in guiding management activities and meeting regional conservation objectives. Here, the results based on two groups of tree-ring samples show that the radial growth of Chinese pine is controlled primarily by water conditions. The longer chronology had the highest correlation coefficient with the January–September mean self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI); therefore, drought variability was reconstructed for the period 1859–2014. Statistical analysis showed that our model explained 41.9% of the variance in radial growth during the 1951–2014 calibration period. Extreme dry and wet events, defined as the criteria of one standard deviation less or greater than the mean value, accounted for 19.9% and 18.6% of the 156-year climate record, respectively. During the past century, the regional hydroclimate experienced significant long-term fluctuations. The dry periods occurred from the early-1900s–1930s and 1980s–2000s, and the wet periods occurred from the 1940s–1970s. The drought reconstruction was consistent with the decreasing trend of the East Asian summer monsoon since the late 1970s. The reconstructed temporal patterns in hydroclimate in western Liaoning were closely related to the large-scale climate drivers in the North Pacific and the tropical equatorial Pacific. The teleconnections were confirmed by spatial correlations between the reconstructed sequence and sea surface temperature (SST) in the North Pacific, as well as the correlations with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indices. Aerosols played an important role in affecting drought variations over the past several decades. Moisture stress caused by global warming and interdecadal changes in the PDO will have long-term effects on the growth of pines in the study area in the future.


Ocean Science ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. I. Shapiro ◽  
D. L. Aleynik ◽  
L. D. Mee

Abstract. There is growing understanding that recent deterioration of the Black Sea ecosystem was partly due to changes in the marine physical environment. This study uses high resolution 0.25° climatology to analyze sea surface temperature variability over the 20th century in two contrasting regions of the sea. Results show that the deep Black Sea was cooling during the first three quarters of the century and was warming in the last 15–20 years; on aggregate there was a statistically significant cooling trend. The SST variability over the Western shelf was more volatile and it does not show statistically significant trends. The cooling of the deep Black Sea is at variance with the general trend in the North Atlantic and may be related to the decrease of westerly winds over the Black Sea, and a greater influence of the Siberian anticyclone. The timing of the changeover from cooling to warming coincides with the regime shift in the Black Sea ecosystem.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (19) ◽  
pp. 6271-6284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaofan Li ◽  
Zeng-Zhen Hu ◽  
Ping Liang ◽  
Jieshun Zhu

Abstract In this work, the roles of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the variability and predictability of the Pacific–North American (PNA) pattern and precipitation in North America in winter are examined. It is noted that statistically about 29% of the variance of PNA is linearly linked to ENSO, while the remaining 71% of the variance of PNA might be explained by other processes, including atmospheric internal dynamics and sea surface temperature variations in the North Pacific. The ENSO impact is mainly meridional from the tropics to the mid–high latitudes, while a major fraction of the non-ENSO variability associated with PNA is confined in the zonal direction from the North Pacific to the North American continent. Such interferential connection on PNA as well as on North American climate variability may reflect a competition between local internal dynamical processes (unpredictable fraction) and remote forcing (predictable fraction). Model responses to observed sea surface temperature and model forecasts confirm that the remote forcing is mainly associated with ENSO and it is the major source of predictability of PNA and winter precipitation in North America.


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