Long-term and multilevel impact assessment of the 2015–2016 El Niño on a sandy beach of the southwestern Atlantic

2021 ◽  
Vol 775 ◽  
pp. 145689
Author(s):  
Gabriela Jorge-Romero ◽  
Eleonora Celentano ◽  
Diego Lercari ◽  
Leonardo Ortega ◽  
Juan A. Licandro ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Scrosati

This study monitored the abundance of the tropical/subtropical seaweed Caulerpa sertularioides (Chlorophyta: Bryopsidales) from a sandy beach from Balandra Cove, on the south-eastern coast of the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico, between April 1998 and April 2000, including consecutive El Niño and La Niña events. El Niño conditions, indicated by relatively high seawater temperatures, were associated with a high population abundance (April–June 1998), whereas La Niña conditions, indicated by relatively low temperatures, were associated with the absence of C. sertularioides (April–June 1999 and April 2000). Caulerpa sertularioides was present during other times of the year during the study period, but never with the high abundance reached during El Niño conditions. Seaweeds of temperate affinity occurring in Baja California, such as Gelidium robustum (Rhodophyta: Gelidiales) and Macrocystis pyrifera (Phaeophyceae: Laminariales), decreased sharply in abundance during El Niño conditions. Therefore, the biogeographic affinity of seaweeds from Baja California might be helpful in predicting the effects of El Niño and La Niña on their abundance, with implications for resource management and for the prediction of the effects of long-term oceanographic changes on seaweed distribution.


2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 1948-1962 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Garcia-Herrera ◽  
D. Barriopedro ◽  
E. Hernández ◽  
H. F. Diaz ◽  
R. R. Garcia ◽  
...  

Abstract The authors present a chronology of El Niño (EN) events based on documentary records from northern Peru. The chronology, which covers the period 1550–1900, is constructed mainly from primary sources from the city of Trujillo (Peru), the Archivo General de Indias in Seville (Spain), and the Archivo General de la Nación in Lima (Peru), supplemented by a reassessment of documentary evidence included in previously published literature. The archive in Trujillo has never been systematically evaluated for information related to the occurrence of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Abundant rainfall and river discharge correlate well with EN events in the area around Trujillo, which is very dry during most other years. Thus, rain and flooding descriptors, together with reports of failure of the local fishery, are the main indicators of EN occurrence that the authors have searched for in the documents. A total of 59 EN years are identified in this work. This chronology is compared with the two main previous documentary EN chronologies and with ENSO indicators derived from proxy data other than documentary sources. Overall, the seventeenth century appears to be the least active EN period, while the 1620s, 1720s, 1810s, and 1870s are the most active decades. The results herein reveal long-term fluctuations in warm ENSO activity that compare reasonably well with low-frequency variability deduced from other proxy data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1760) ◽  
pp. 20170315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cleiton B. Eller ◽  
Lucy Rowland ◽  
Rafael S. Oliveira ◽  
Paulo R. L. Bittencourt ◽  
Fernanda V. Barros ◽  
...  

The current generation of dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) lacks a mechanistic representation of vegetation responses to soil drought, impairing their ability to accurately predict Earth system responses to future climate scenarios and climatic anomalies, such as El Niño events. We propose a simple numerical approach to model plant responses to drought coupling stomatal optimality theory and plant hydraulics that can be used in dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). The model is validated against stand-scale forest transpiration ( E ) observations from a long-term soil drought experiment and used to predict the response of three Amazonian forest sites to climatic anomalies during the twentieth century. We show that our stomatal optimization model produces realistic stomatal responses to environmental conditions and can accurately simulate how tropical forest E responds to seasonal, and even long-term soil drought. Our model predicts a stronger cumulative effect of climatic anomalies in Amazon forest sites exposed to soil drought during El Niño years than can be captured by alternative empirical drought representation schemes. The contrasting responses between our model and empirical drought factors highlight the utility of hydraulically-based stomatal optimization models to represent vegetation responses to drought and climatic anomalies in DGVMs. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The impact of the 2015/2016 El Niño on the terrestrial tropical carbon cycle: patterns, mechanisms and implications’.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saginela Ravindra Babu ◽  
Madineni Venkat Ratnam ◽  
Ghouse Basha ◽  
Shantanu Kumar Pani ◽  
Neng-Huei Lin

Abstract. In this work, the detailed changes in the structure, dynamics and trace gases within the Asian summer monsoon anticyclone (ASMA) during extreme El Niño of 2015–16 is delineated by using Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) measurements, COSMIC Radio Occultation (RO) temperature, and NCEP reanalysis products. We have considered the individual months of July and August 2015 for the present study. The results show that the ASMA structure was quite different in 2015 as compared to the long-term (2005–2014) mean. In July, the spatial extension of the ASMA shows larger than the long-term mean in all the regions except over northeastern Asia, where, it exhibits a strong southward shift in its position. The ASMA splits into two and western Pacific mode is evident in August. Interestingly, the subtropical westerly jet (STJ) shifted southward from its normal position over northeastern Asia as resulted mid latitude air moved southward in 2015. Intense Rossby wave breaking events along with STJ are also found in July 2015. Due to these dynamical changes in the ASMA, pronounced changes in the ASMA tracers are noticed in 2015 compared to the long-term mean. A 30 % (20 %) decrease in carbon monoxide (water vapor) at 100 hPa is observed in July over most of the ASMA region, whereas in August the drop is strongly concentrated in the edges of the ASMA. Prominent increase of O3 (> 40 %) at 100 hPa is clearly evident within the ASMA in July, whereas in August the increase is strongly located (even at 121 hPa) over the western edges of the ASMA. Further, the temperature around the tropopause shows significant positive anomalies (~ 5 K) within the ASMA in 2015. Overall, warming of the tropopause region due to the increased O3 weakens the anticyclone and further supported the weaker ASMA in 2015 reported by previous studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 214 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengheng Li ◽  
Siem Jan Koopman ◽  
Rutger Lit ◽  
Desislava Petrova

Ocean Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mei Hong ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Ren Zhang ◽  
Dong Wang ◽  
Shuanghe Shen ◽  
...  

Abstract. With the objective of tackling the problem of inaccurate long-term El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecasts, this paper develops a new dynamical–statistical forecast model of the sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) field. To avoid single initial prediction values, a self-memorization principle is introduced to improve the dynamical reconstruction model, thus making the model more appropriate for describing such chaotic systems as ENSO events. The improved dynamical–statistical model of the SSTA field is used to predict SSTA in the equatorial eastern Pacific and during El Niño and La Niña events. The long-term step-by-step forecast results and cross-validated retroactive hindcast results of time series T1 and T2 are found to be satisfactory, with a Pearson correlation coefficient of approximately 0.80 and a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of less than 15 %. The corresponding forecast SSTA field is accurate in that not only is the forecast shape similar to the actual field but also the contour lines are essentially the same. This model can also be used to forecast the ENSO index. The temporal correlation coefficient is 0.8062, and the MAPE value of 19.55 % is small. The difference between forecast results in spring and those in autumn is not high, indicating that the improved model can overcome the spring predictability barrier to some extent. Compared with six mature models published previously, the present model has an advantage in prediction precision and length, and is a novel exploration of the ENSO forecast method.


1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Guinet ◽  
P. Jouventin ◽  
J-Y. Georges

The population trend over the last decade for subantarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus tropicalis) on Amsterdam and St. Paul islands and on Possession Island (Crozet Archipelago) and Antarctic fur seals (A. gazella) on Possession Island are analysed. At Amsterdam Island, based on pup counts, the subantarctic fur seal population appears to have stabilized after a period of rapid growth. At Possession Island subantarctic fur seal and Antarctic fur seal, with respective annual growth rates of 19.2 and 17.4%, are reaching the maximum growth rate for the genus Arctocephalus. Annual pup censuses at Possession Island since 1978 indicate important variations from year to year with pup production for A. gazella significantly lower the year after an El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event, but with no such relationship for A. tropicalis. Several other long term demographic studies of seabirds and marine mammals at different breeding locations in the Southern Ocean indicate that the breeding success of several of these predators appears to be widely affected in years which appear to be related to the ENSO events. To clarify this, it is necessary to analyse in more detail the demographic data obtained for the different subantarctic and Antarctic locations where long term monitoring programmes are conducted.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (8) ◽  
pp. 2885-2903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hoell ◽  
Mathew Barlow ◽  
Forest Cannon ◽  
Taiyi Xu

While a strong influence on cold season southwest Asia precipitation by Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) has been previously established, the scarcity of southwest Asia precipitation observations prior to 1960 renders the region’s long-term precipitation history largely unknown. Here a large ensemble of atmospheric model simulations forced by observed time-varying boundary conditions for 1901–2012 is used to examine the long-term sensitivity of November–April southwest Asia precipitation to Pacific SSTs. It is first established that the models are able to reproduce the key features of regional variability during the best-observed 1960–2005 period and then the pre-1960 variability is investigated using the model simulations. During the 1960–2005 period, both the mean precipitation and the two leading modes of precipitation variability during November–April are reasonably simulated by the atmospheric models, which include the previously identified relationships with El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the multidecadal warming of Indo-Pacific SSTs. Over the full 1901–2012 period, there are notable variations in precipitation and in the strength of the SST influence. A long-term drying of the region is associated with the Indo-Pacific warming, with a nearly 10% reduction in westernmost southwest Asia precipitation during 1938–2012. The influence of ENSO on southwest Asia precipitation varied in strength throughout the period: strong prior to the 1950s, weak between 1950 and 1980, and strongest after the 1980s. These variations were not antisymmetric between ENSO phases. El Niño was persistently related with anomalously wet conditions throughout 1901–2012, whereas La Niña was not closely linked to precipitation anomalies prior to the 1970s but has been associated with exceptionally dry conditions thereafter.


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