Greenhouse gas, upwelling‐favorable winds, and the future of coastal ocean upwelling ecosystems

Coastal ocean upwelling ecosystems generally represent the most productive large marine ecosystems of the world's oceans, in terms of both primary production rates and tonnages of exploitable fish produced. The Peruvian upwelling system, in particular, stands out as a major factor in world fish production. The Pacific trade winds have traditionally been considered to be the primary driving force for the upwelling system off Peru, but are projected to weaken as climate change proceeds. This leads to concern that the upwelling process in the Peru system, to which its productivity is linked, may likewise weaken. However, other mechanisms involving greenhouse-associated intensification of thermal low-pressure cells over the coastal landmasses of upwelling regions suggest general intensification of wind-driven ocean upwelling in coastal upwelling regions of the world's oceans. But although certain empirical results have supported this expectation, it has not been consistently corroborated in climate model simulations, possibly because the scale of the coastal intensification may be small relative to the scales that are appropriately reflected in the standard models. Here we summarize available evidence for the intensification mechanism and present a proxy test that uses variations in water vapor, the dominant natural greenhouse gas, to offer multiple-realization empirical evidence for action of the proposed mechanism in the real world situation. While many potential consequences to the future of marine ecosystems would codepend on climate change-related changes in the thermocline and nutricline structures, an important subset, involving potential increased propensities for hypoxia, noxious gas eruptions, toxic red tide blooms, and/or jellyfish outbreaks, may depend more directly on changes in the upwelling-favorable wind itself. A prospective role of fisheries in either mitigating or reinforcing this particular class of effects is suggested.

[1]  R. Mendelssohn,et al.  Common and uncommon trends in SST and wind stress in the California and Peru-Chile current systems , 2002 .

[2]  W. H. Quinn,et al.  HISTORICAL TRENDS AND STATISTICS OF THE SOUTHERN OSCILLATION, EL NINO, AND INDONESIAN DROUGHTS , 1978 .

[3]  N. Diffenbaugh,et al.  Could CO2-induced land-cover feedbacks alter near-shore upwelling regimes? , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[4]  Hans von Storch,et al.  Dynamical downscaling: Assessment of model system dependent retained and added variability for two different regional climate models , 2008 .

[5]  Francis L. Ludwig,et al.  Evaluating an Objective Wind Analysis Technique with a Long Record of Routinely Collected Data , 2000 .

[6]  P. Mote,et al.  Coastal upwelling in a warmer future , 2002 .

[7]  Scarla J. Weeks,et al.  Adverse feedback sequences in exploited marine systems: are deliberate interruptive actions warranted? , 2006 .

[8]  J. Barth.  Stability of a coastal upwelling front: 2. Model results and comparison with observations , 1989 .

[9]  N. Bond,et al.  Climate projections for selected large marine ecosystems , 2010 .

[10]  F. H. W. Green,et al.  The Earth's Problem Climates , 1963 .

[11]  S. Trumbore,et al.  Evidence from Cd/Ca ratios in foraminifera for greater upwelling off California 4,000 years ago , 1992, Nature.

[12]  Andrew M. Fischer,et al.  Influences of upwelling and downwelling winds on red tide bloom dynamics in Monterey Bay, California , 2009 .

[13]  P. Gent,et al.  The NCAR Climate System Model, Version One* , 1998 .

[14]  E. Marañón,et al.  Changes in phytoplankton ecophysiology across a coastal upwelling front , 1995 .

[15]  A. M. Santos,et al.  Decadal changes in the Canary upwelling system as revealed by satellite observations: Their impact on productivity , 2005 .

[16]  D. Breitburg,et al.  Effects of low dissolved oxygen on zooplankton predation by the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi , 2004 .

[17]  Vera Vasas,et al.  Eutrophication and overfishing in temperate nearshore pelagic food webs: a network perspective , 2007 .

[18]  R. Mendelssohn,et al.  Increased coastal upwelling in the California Current System , 1997 .

[19]  C. Lange,et al.  Enhancement of coastal upwelling and interdecadal ENSO‐like variability in the Peru‐Chile Current since late 19th century , 2007 .

[20]  C. Shields,et al.  Modeling El Niño and its tropical teleconnections during the last glacial‐interglacial cycle , 2003 .

[21]  G. Csanady.  The Arrested Topographic Wave , 1978 .

[22]  A. E. Gill,et al.  The Annual Cycle of Sea Level in the Eastern Tropical Pacific , 1986 .

[23]  Scarla J. Weeks,et al.  Greenhouse gas buildup, sardines, submarine eruptions and the possibility of abrupt degradation of intense marine upwelling ecosystems , 2004 .

[24]  William W. Hsieh,et al.  Global climate change and ocean upwelling , 1992 .

[25]  S. Mulitza,et al.  Rapid 20th-Century Increase in Coastal Upwelling off Northwest Africa , 2007, Science.

[26]  G. Pitcher,et al.  Characteristics of the surface boundary layer important to the development of red tide on the southern Namaqua shelf of the Benguela upwelling system , 2006 .

[27]  C. S. Ramage.  Secular Change in Reported Surface Wind Speeds over the Ocean , 1987 .

[28]  Scarla J. Weeks,et al.  Hydrogen sulphide eruptions in the Atlantic Ocean off southern Africa: implications of a new view based on SeaWiFS satellite imagery , 2004 .

[29]  D. Enfield,et al.  Thermally driven wind variability in the planetary boundary layer above Lima, Peru , 1981 .

[30]  S. Manabe,et al.  On the Distribution of Climate Change Resulting from an Increase in CO2 Content of the Atmosphere , 1980 .

[31]  Anthony J Richardson,et al.  The jellyfish joyride: causes, consequences and management responses to a more gelatinous future. , 2009, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[32]  Mark Falvey,et al.  Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joc.1716 The coastal winds off western subtropical South America in future climate scenarios , 2022 .

[33]  James C. McWilliams,et al.  The Warming of the California Current System: Dynamics and Ecosystem Implications , 2005 .

[34]  L. Gandin.  Objective Analysis of Meteorological Fields , 1963 .

[35]  N. Diffenbaugh,et al.  Future climate change and upwelling in the California Current , 2003 .

[36]  R. Rosenberg,et al.  Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems , 2008, Science.

[37]  P. K. Taylor,et al.  Wind stress measurements from the open ocean , 1996 .

[38]  James D. Hamilton.  Time Series Analysis , 1994 .

[39]  J. Bjerknes,et al.  A possible response of the atmospheric Hadley circulation to equatorial anomalies of ocean temperature , 1966 .

[40]  A Bakun,et al.  Global Climate Change and Intensification of Coastal Ocean Upwelling , 1990, Science.

[41]  K. Cochrane,et al.  The 1980s – a decade of change in the Benguela ecosystem , 1992 .

[42]  C. Reason,et al.  ENSO related modulation of coastal upwelling in the eastern Atlantic , 2001 .

[43]  V. J. Cardone,et al.  On Trends in Historical Marine Wind Data , 1990 .

[44]  G. Daskalov,et al.  Overfishing drives a trophic cascade in the Black Sea , 2002 .

[45]  Xabier Irigoien,et al.  Phytoplankton blooms: a ‘loophole’ in microzooplankton grazing impact? , 2005 .

[46]  G. Vecchi,et al.  Weakening of tropical Pacific atmospheric circulation due to anthropogenic forcing , 2006, Nature.

[47]  Scarla J. Weeks,et al.  The marine ecosystem off Peru: What are the secrets of its fishery productivity and what might its future hold? , 2008 .

[48]  D. Enfield,et al.  On the Structure and Dynamics of Monthly Mean Sea Level Anomalies along the Pacific Coast of North and South America , 1980 .

[49]  K. Wyrtki,et al.  El Niño—The Dynamic Response of the Equatorial Pacific Oceanto Atmospheric Forcing , 1975 .

[50]  R. Seager,et al.  Twentieth-Century Sea Surface Temperature Trends , 1997, Science.

[51]  A. Brierley,et al.  Jellyfish overtake fish in a heavily fished ecosystem , 2006, Current Biology.

[52]  M. Carr.  Estimation of potential productivity in Eastern Boundary Currents using remote sensing , 2001 .

[53]  Jean-Louis Reyss,et al.  Rapid reorganization in ocean biogeochemistry off Peru towards the end of the Little Ice Age , 2008 .

[54]  J. Lubchenco,et al.  Emergence of Anoxia in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem , 2008, Science.

[55]  M. Arai,et al.  A Functional Biology of Scyphozoa , 1996, Springer Netherlands.

[56]  Claudia E. Mills,et al.  Jellyfish blooms: are populations increasing globally in response to changing ocean conditions? , 2001, Hydrobiologia.

[57]  H. Sverdrup.  On the Process of Upwelling , 1938 .