Feature Publication Archive
MJO Schematic showing the eastward moving disturbance of clouds, rainfall, winds, and pressure that circles the planet in the tropics and returns to its points of origin in 30 to 60 days, on average. Read the full description on climate.gov.
Zhang, C. (PMEL), A. Adames, B. Khouidar, B. Wang, and D. Yang (2020): Four theories of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. Rev. Geophys., 58(3), e2019RG000685. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RG000685
The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the leading intraseasonal (20–100 days) variability in the tropics. It affects many weather-climate phenomena globally. Tremendous progress has been made in observing, describing, simulating, understanding, and forecasting the MJO since its first documentation in the early 1970s. In particular, theoretical understanding of the MJO has flourished during the past decade or two, with very diverse ideas on the fundamental components of MJO dynamics.
Large-scale drivers of subsurface variability in the Northern California Current System (N-CCS). Adapted from Chen et al. (2014). Click on image for larger map.
Ray, S., S.A. Siedlecki, M.A. Alexander, N.A. Bond, and A.J. Hermann (2020): Drivers of subsurface temperature variability in the Northern California Current. J. Geophys. Res., 125(8), e2020JC016227. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JC016227
The Washington/Oregon shelf, embedded in the Northern California Current System, is a productive habitat with important commercial fisheries. One of the most valuable species is Dungeness crab, which resides on the subsurface shelf and is sensitive to near‐bottom ocean properties such as temperatures and oxygen concentrations. The predictability of these properties on seasonal time scales is being investigated using J‐SCOPE (JISAO's Seasonal Coastal Ocean Prediction of the Ecosystem), developed at the University of Washington’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies... more »
Upper-ocean heat content anomaly linear trends for 1993–2019. Annual estimates of the PMEL combined maps. Values are in W m-2 (colour bar) applying 90% two-tailed (5–95%) confidence limits to outline areas with trends that are statistically significantly different from zero (black contours). Latitudes are gridded at 30° intervals, and longitudes, centered on 150 °W, at 60° intervals (dotted lines). OHCA, ocean heat content anomaly.
Johnson, G.C., and J.M. Lyman, 2020: Warming trends increasingly dominate Global Ocean. Nature Clim. Change, 10, 757–761. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0822-0
Ocean warming absorbs about 9/10th of the excess energy that is entering Earth’s climate system because of a build-up of man-made greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. That warming causes ocean expansion, contributing to sea level rise. Knowing how much, and where the ocean is warming is vital for validating climate models, predicting climate change, assessing sea level rise, and understanding changing marine ecosystems.
Johnson and Lyman (2020) analyze over 15 years of near-global, high-quality, in situ ocean temperature measurements from the Argo array coupled with other historical... more »
Tsunami finite-fault model for the dynamically-triggered early aftershocks of the 2010 M7.0 Haiti earthquake. Colors denote vertical seafloor deformation from the tsunami source model. Yellow contours are the peak back-projected energy contours of the main shock and the three early aftershocks. Red star is the epicenter of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The DART buoy D42407 is positioned about 600 km southeast of the epicenter of the main shock in the Caribbean Sea.
ten Brink, U., Y. Wei (UW-CICOES/OAR-PMEL), W. Fan, J.-L. Granja-Bruña, and N. Miller, 2020: Mysterious tsunami in the Caribbean Sea following the 2010 Haiti earthquake possibly generated by dynamically triggered early aftershocks. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 540, 116269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116269.
The magnitude 7.0 Haiti earthquake of 2010 ruptured a complex fault network including both strike-slip faults (where two blocks slide past one another) and reverse faults (in which the upper block, above the fault plane, moves up and over the lower block). The earthquake affected the region spanning from the northern side of Haiti’s Southern Peninsula on land to an area off the north shore of the peninsula. The offshore rupture produced a minor tsunami that impacted the north shore of the Southern Peninsula.
Intriguingly, a much more prominent tsunami was also reported with up to 3... more »
Dungeness crab larvae (a) and magnified segment of its damaged shell (b) from Bednaršek et al. (2020).
Bednaršek, N., R.A. Feely, M.W. Beck, S.R. Alin, S.A. Siedlecki, P. Calosi, E.L. Norton, C. Saenger, J. Štrus, D. Greeley, N.P. Nezlin, and J.I. Spicer (2020): Exoskeleton dissolution with mechanoreceptor damage in larval Dungeness crab related to severity of present-day ocean acidification vertical gradients. Sci. Total Environ., 716, 136610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.136610
With annual revenues up to $220 million, the Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) is one of the most valuable commercial fisheries on the US West Coast. Yet, rapid intensification of ocean acidification (OA) along the US West Coast is reducing natural habitats of crabs by increasing corrosiveness of the water due to the uptake of human-generated CO2. The steady increase in seawater CO2 can trigger multiple impacts that are most significant in the upper water column that is inhabited by Dungeness crab larvae, one of the most vulnerable life stages of the 4-year long life cycle of... more »