Update on Greene et al. IVb project:
We have a paper in press in Ecology that follows up on our 2007 Science
paper on Arctic impacts on the NW Atlantic. I am refining my comparison
of the Gulf of Maine continuous plankton recorder (CPR) data with CPR
data from the Mid-Atlantic Bight, Scotian Shelf, and Newfoundland Shelf.
My preliminary analysis (presented at Ocean Sciences) found evidence of
a coherent interdecadal variability over the NW Atlantic.
Comments on related work:
I have a NASA-funded project to develop an operational Calanus
finmarchicus model and predictions of where right whales are likely to be.
The Calanus model has three sources of interannual variability: the initial
conditions from the CPR, SST from satellites, and chlorophyll from satellites.
We recently completed an experiment where we replaced two of the sources
with their seasonal climatologies in order to isolate the effect of each
source. As currently configured, initial conditions and SST have
approximately the same influence on interannual variability. Basically,
if you begin the year with an anomaly, SST and to a lesser extent,
chlorophyll will override that anomaly after ~50 days. Chlorophyll was
much weaker than the other sources, but this could be due to the
satellites overestimating chlorophyll at low (<2 mg/m3) concentrations.
This analysis will be submitted shortly to MEPS.