Tracking the SeaWiFS record with a coupled physical/biogeochemical/ radiative model of the global oceans, Deep-Sea Res.II

• Main Author: Watson W. Gregg
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pacific; North Atlantic; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.559.9408; http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/oceanbiology/reprints/gregg_DSR2002.pdf

The Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) has observed multiple years of routine global chlorophyll observations from space. The mission was launched into a record El Ni *no event, which eventually gave way to one of the most intense and longest-lasting La Ni *na events ever recorded. The SeaWiFS chlorophyll record captured the response of ocean phytoplankton to these significant events in the tropical Indo-Pacific basins, but also indicated significant interannual variability unrelated to the El Ni *no/La Ni *na events. This included large variability in the North Atlantic and Pacific basins, in the North Central and equatorial Atlantic, and milder patterns in the North Central Pacific. This SeaWiFS record was tracked with a coupled physical/biogeochemical/radiative model of the global oceans using near-real-time forcing data such as wind stresses, sea surface temperatures, and sea ice. This provided an opportunity to offer physically and biogeochemically meaningful explanations of the variability observed in the SeaWiFS data set, since the causal mechanisms and interrelationships of the model are completely understood. The coupled model was able to represent the seasonal distributions of chlorophyll during the SeaWiFS era, and was capable of differentiating among the widely different processes and dynamics occurring in the