U.S. GLOBEC NEP
26 August 2008 -- "Forecasting NEP responses to La Nina"
Nick Bond, Hal Batchelder and Steve Bograd report the results of an expert group exercise
to forecast the responses of the Northeast Pacific (including both the Northern California Current
and Coastal Gulf of Alaska regions) to a strong La Nina (anticipated for 2008).
The summary recently appeared in EOS Transactions of the AGU.
A PDF of the short article is available at the link below.
Bond, N. A., Batchelder, H.P., Bograd, S. J. 2008.
Forecasting Northeastern Pacific ecosystem responses to La Nina.
EOS, 89 (35), 321-322. (26 August 2008)
In addition to gathering and consolidating opinions of expert oceanographers,
marine ecologists and fisheries scientists, the exercise illuminated why some
forecasts had high confidence, while others, esp. in the more northern regions,
had lower confidence. The exercise led to evaluation of what we really know/understand about climate-ecosystem interactions
and how confident we are in our understanding of complex processes.
The expert opinion process may be useful for identifying gaps in knowledge worthy of increased emphasis.
12 July 2005 -- "Plankton Vanishing!"
Glen Martin, environmental writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, writes that oceanic plankton abundances have mysteriously declined off Northern California, Oregon and Washington. US GLOBEC Scientist Bill Peterson of the NWFSC--NOAA Fisheries is quoted several times in the article. Salmon abundance in regular annual nearshore surveys is way down in the spring and summer 2005 surveys. See the complete report at:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/12/MNG8SDMMR01.DTL
18 July 2003 -- "Krillbola!"
Jaime Gomez-Gutierrez of Oregon State University describes a new source of mortality for krill (euphausiids). See his paper in the journal Science:
Gomez-Gutierrez J., Peterson, W.T., De-Robertis, A, Brodeur, R. 2003.
Mass mortality of krill caused by parasitoid ciliates. Science. 301
(5631): 339.
The krillbola phenomenon is also summarized in National Geographic News.