North-South shifts of the Gulf Stream and their climatic connection with the abundance of zooplankton in the UK and its surrounding seas
Earlier time series of the mean latitude of the north wall of the Gulf Stream have been updated to give a series of monthly values from 1966 to 1993. The year-to-year changes in this series are strongly correlated with the abundances of plankton observed by the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey ar...
| Published in: | ICES Journal of Marine Science |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
1995
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/52/3-4/711 https://doi.org/10.1016/1054-3139(95)80084-0 |
| Summary: | Earlier time series of the mean latitude of the north wall of the Gulf Stream have been updated to give a series of monthly values from 1966 to 1993. The year-to-year changes in this series are strongly correlated with the abundances of plankton observed by the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey around the British Isles and also with the abundance of zooplankton in Lake Windermere. These connections reflect changing weather patterns across the North Atlantic. The north wall data and their principal components analysis are described. The first principal component, whose eigenvector coefficients all have the same sign, is a measure of the latitude of the whole of the north wall, perhaps representing the occurrences of meanders that are extensive in space and time. The association with the north wall series is shown to be widespread across zooplankton species in the North Sea. Further, when different areas are compared, there is some tendency for species to show greater intercorrelation in their inter-annual variations as their association with the Gulf Stream increases. The estimate of “total copepods” shows stronger correlation with the position of the Gulf Stream than the individual species of which the estimate is composed. It is shown that the results are consistent with the climatic response seen in “total copepods” being the sum of the responses of individual species. It is suggested that the association between the two sides of the North Atlantic may arise because of local perturbations of the atmospheric circulation caused by the north-south displacements of the Gulf Stream. |
|---|