Increasing Biomass in the Warm Oceans: Unexpected New Insights From SeaWiFS
2019
Marine
phytoplanktonbiomass and community structure are expected to change under
global warming, with potentially significant impacts on ocean carbon,
nutrient cycling, and marine
food webs. Previous studies have indicated decreases of primary production and chlorophyll a concentrations and oligotrophic gyre expansions from satellite ocean‐color measurements, purportedly due to
global warming. We review this topic via a reanalysis of a novel backscattering‐based
phytoplankton
functional typeand
phytoplanktonbiomass time series over the 1997–2010 period. Unlike previous work, we find that globally the biomass and the percent of large (small)
phytoplanktonincrease (decrease). The oligotrophic gyres contract or expand depending on the chlorophyll a threshold definition employed. In the subtropical gyres, chlorophyll a trends are likely due to physiological changes, while the increasing biomass trends are due to winds and relevant mixing length scale increases.
Keywords:
-
Correction
-
Source
-
Cite
-
Save
70
References
8
Citations
NaN
KQI