NSF-GLOBEC Pan-regional Synthesis: Pacific Ocean Boundary Ecosystems: response to natural and anthropogenic climate forcing

PIs: E. Di Lorenzo, J. C.  Furtado, A. Bracco, J. Keister, P.T. Strub, A. Thomas, P.J.S. Franks
NOAA Co-PIs: S. Bograd, W. Peterson, R. Mendelssohn, F. Schwing
Japanese Collaborators: S. Chiba, Y. Sasai, H. Sasaki, M. Nonaka, B. Taguchi, A. Ishida
South American Collaborators: O. Pizarro, R. Escribano, J. Rutllant, V. Montecino
Canadian Collaborators: D. Mackas, M. Foreman, A. Pena, W. Crawford

Project Goal - [ POBE-Project-Summary.pdf ]
Using US and international observational datasets combined with physical and biological models, this project investigates the mechanisms of climate-related variability in three Pacific boundary ecosystems: Gulf of Alaska (GOA) and California Current System (CCS) referred to as the Northeast Pacific (NEP), the Humboldt or Peru-Chile Current System (PCCS), and the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE) region.

Research Activites - [ POBE-Hypothesis-Research-Tasks.pdf ]
(1) Assess to what extent, and by what mechanisms, large-scale climate modes (e.g. PDO, NPGO, ENSO, and potentially others) drove coherent changes across Pacific boundary ecosystems over the period 1960-2007.

(2) Quantify and explain how changes in regional ocean processes (e.g. upwelling, transport dynamics, mixing and mesoscale structure) at each boundary control phytoplankton and zooplankton dynamics. Then, use those results to test the degree to which changes in each study region reflect bottom-up control of their respective ecosystems.

(3) Quantify the extent to which changes in the statistics of shorter-period events (e.g. intraseasonal oscillation, timing of spring transitions) during different phases of the longer-period climate modes (e.g. PDO, NPGO and others) determine the climate state of boundary-current ecosystems.

(4) Explore the range of uncertainties in the response of regional ocean dynamics and their ecosystems to climate change using forcing scenarios from selected climate model integrations that are part of the IPCC 2007 report. This last objective begins an assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on regional ocean ecosystems, a topic poorly addressed in the latest IPCC report, but the chief instrument for most fisheries and coastal management.