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Upper ocean biogeochemistry |
Biochemical responses to climate and ocean variability
Lead Scientist/Project Manager: Francisco Chavez
This proposal focuses on the
biogeochemical response of the central California ecosystem to climate and
ocean variability. The data used in this investigation comes from
moorings, with novel instruments and telemetry, satellites and ships. By
2000 we will have collected a ten-year time series of shipboard data. It
will include data from the 1997-98 El Niño, a particularly strong event,
and the La Niña currently developing in the tropical Pacific. After an
intensive period of observation from 1997 to mid-2000, we propose to
transition the routine ship time-series measurements to moorings,
satellites and other remote sensing devices including AUV’s.
We also will continue to work collaboratively with two modeling efforts. The first type of modeling effort assimilates
satellite information and predicts new and total primary production. The
second is based on numerical modeling. Coupled ocean-atmosphere numerical
models for the Monterey Bay region and the northeast Pacific will be
developed as part of a National Ocean Partnership Program proposal and by
University of California-Los Angeles modelers. MBARI will
provide climatological and real-time data to initialize and be assimilated
by these models. A parallel effort will be to develop initial conditions
for chemical and biological fields and fundamental equations describing
biological-physical coupling. The output of the physical models will drive
biogeochemical models and be used to predict three-dimensional biological
and chemical fields. The modeling efforts will define future
process-oriented experiments.
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