Seascape Projects

Bob has been studying coral reefs for a long time, and he is also an avid sailor.  He is also one of the most creative scientists I've met.  The latest evidence of his creativity: he has managed to combine sailing and coral reef ecology into an awesome sabbatical (assuming he survives).  

He has sailed his boat Alaria, a 34' cutter-rigged Pacific Seacraft, from Maine to Bermuda.  He will soon be on his way to the Antilles, where he will spend several months studying the reefs there.  You can keep tabs on his adventures through his blog.

The meeting was held on Tuesday in Portsmouth (NH, not England--maybe next year), and we had a huge turnout. I think this speaks to the impact that the 2012 event had on the collective psyche of the Gulf of Maine community.  We had a great series of talks and posters (here's the agenda  and hopefully, we'll get the talks up on the RARGOM website soon), and I think we're starting to get a picture of just how weird things have gotten in the Gulf of Maine. Here are a few themes that stuck out for me:

One of the statements we make in the paper is that "Many biological responses to the warmer 2012 conditions could have been predicted using data that are routinely collected by ocean observing systems."  This statement is meant to be a challenge to the community to start developing ecosystem forecasts using the observing systems. After all, many of these systems were sold based on their ability to provide information useful to resource management. 

To test our assertion, I put together some very simple statistical forecasts for weekly surface temperatures at Buoy E in the Gulf of Maine based on the temperature conditions during the first week of May.  This is basically an extension of my prediction from a few weeks ago. I also developed a simple statistical model that predicts the change in the start of the high-catch period of the lobster fishery.  A description of the models is at the end of the post. Here's what we get for 2013:

The blue region is the mean temperature cycle surrounded by 95% confidence bounds.  The gray region is the 95% confidence intervals surrounding the prediction (black line).  The red crosses are the actual observations. At the start of May, we were just under a degree warmer than average, and the model predicts a slightly above normal summer.  Note that the most recent observation was actually a bit below normal.  It will be interesting to see how this progresses, given that NOAA is still predicting an above average summer using their more complex models.  I predict a slightly earlier start to the lobster season.

To check the validity of this approach, I went through the full forecasting process for each year from 2002-2012.  For each year, I didn't include any data from that year when I fit the temperature and lobster models.  Thus, the correspondence between the red crosses (the observations) and the forecast (black line) should be a good test of the approach.  Here's how we would've done in 2012:

1. Here is a time-lapse video that Dom put together from the fall Gulf of Maine cruise on the Cape Hatteras. It's a pretty cool view of life on a research vessel, and I like how he highlights interesting moments by switch from time-lapse to slo-mo.

2. I was interviewed for a couple of stories on warming in the Gulf of Maine.  The WCSH story has a nice video that features my colleague Bob Steneck.  The HuffPo article has some nice quotes by Jeff Runge.  Both Tom Zeller from HuffPo and Don Carrigan from WCSH were amazing to work with.  They had each clearly put in many hours of research before talking to me and both spent at least an hour in the lab.

WCSH6: Warmer gulf forcing changes

Think about that.  The last time the Earth had an atmosphere with this much CO2 was 3 million years ago.  Back then, there were no humans.  There were no Neanderthal.  Our beloved genus Homo would not appear for several hundred thousand years.  Our closest ancestor was Australopithecus afarensis (aka Lucy):

I don't mean to suggest that high CO2 will suddenly favor poor language skills, longer toes, and robust body hair; however, it is very hard to predict what our new climate will mean for us.  We know the big picture of what will happen--higher temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, less ice, higher sea level, and a more acidic ocean.  These will be major challenges to our civilization that has built major cities along the coasts and in places with limited freshwater (I'm talking about you, Phoenix).  Our big brains and five-fingered hands give us an amazing ability to adapt to our environment. We have the ability to reign in CO2 emissions, and maybe even accelerate the rate at which is is removed from the atmosphere.  We also can choose to reinforce or relocate our cities and citizens.  While I'm bummed that we hit this milestone, I'm more disappointed that we (I'm talking to you, USA), can't seem to have a rational, science-based discussion of the risks of the climate change and the choices we face.

Last weekend, the Portland Press Herald ran a story on how lobstermen in Maine are worried about a repeat of last year's warm temperatures and the havoc that the warming caused on the lobster fishery (early inshore migration and ramp-up of high catch period, glut of soft-shells, record catch, collapse in price, etc.).  The paper used the NERACOOS "Ocean and Weather Climate Display" tool to conclude that temperatures at 50 m (locations not specified) are running 1-2° above the average. My colleague Rick Wahle was quoted "We aren't likely to see as an extreme of an event as last year, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see an earlier-than-normal shed."  This prompted me to wonder whether conditions in April are a good predictor of temperatures in the rest of the year?

I grabbed the data from NERACOOS Buoy E.  This buoy has been in the water since 2001, and I think it's location makes it a good indicator of conditions along the coast of Maine.  I then averaged the 0, 20, and 50m temperatures into 8 day bins.  Then, I looked at the correlation between the bin starting on April 15 with the temperatures later in the year:

Not surprisingly, at all depths, the correlation with April 15 decreases the further you go on the year.  For the surface temperatures, the correlations decline quite rapidly, but at 20 and 50m, the correlation is quite strong, even into December.  The rapid decline in the correlations at the end of the year reflects the influence of winter mixing and cooling.  My hunch is this continues to decline until late March, when the minimum temperature is reached. 

The strong correlation between April and summer temperatures can be used to forecast conditions this summer.  Unfortunately, the 20m and 50m instruments at Buoy E seem to be offline.  However, nearby Buoy B is running 1°C above its mean temperature, so we'll use that.  Note: the 1-2° increase over the mean reported by the PPH seems to be driven a layer of very warm, salty water in Jordan Basin.  This is potentially an intrusion of temperate, perhaps even Gulf Stream, water.  Worth keeping an eye on this, but my suspicion is that it is an isolated pocket of water that will not impact the more coastal areas we're interested in.  So, if I plug a 1°C anomaly into the equations relating April temperature to the rest of the year, I can predict the temperatures for this summer:

The blue line is the average temperature at 20m at Buoy E, and the red dashed line is the prediction.  The shaded area indicates the uncertainty around the prediction.  Based on the uncertainties, there's a 75% chance that bottom temps will be warmer than average this summer and a 50% chance that they'll be more than 0.5 degrees warmer.  There is only a 1 in 10 chance that we'll get temperatures as warm as last summer. 

It's worth noting that this prediction assumes that atmospheric conditions will be normal.  During my temperature-cod analysis, I was able to estimate 20m and 50m temperatures using temperatures from the surface.  This suggests that while the 20 m waters might be separated from the surface, the isolation is not complete.  Weather conditions will have a weak effect below 20m, even in the summer, and likely, the deeper layers accumulate the changes coming from the atmosphere.  If the next few months are warmer (or cooler) than average, then I would expect the 20m predictions to run slightly warmer (or slightly cooler).  Right now, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center says there is a 33% chance that New England will be warmer than the 1981-2010 average:

If this plays out, I would expect the summer 20m temperatures to be even warmer than I predict, but a repeat of 2012 is still unlikely.