Feature Publication Archive
Studying where some of the smallest organisms in the ocean are located can be difficult when they are found beneath the surface. In the late summer and early fall, phytoplankton in the Chukchi Sea are usually found in thin, patchy layers that can only be observed using shipboard surveys. In a collaborative effort between PMEL’s EcoFOCI group and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, scientists were able to map the distribution of subsurface phytoplankton using a novel high-resolution towed instrument platform. A significant fraction of the phytoplankton biomass is contained in these layers,... more »
Overland, J.E. (2016): Is the melting Arctic changing mid-latitude weather? Phys. Today, 69(3), 38–43, doi: 10.1063/PT.3.3107.
According to model simulations, a warming Arctic can shift the circulation patterns of the polar jet stream and bring frigid air southward. But has it?
Since the 1980's the Arctic’s temperature rose at a rate more than double that of the Northern Hemisphere average—a relative increase referred to as Arctic amplification. Thinning sea ice, retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, and greening tundra are among the numerous trends that are apparent in today’s Arctic.
Arctic warming may be responsible for another kind of severe weather: bouts of abnormally cold weather a thousand... more »
Johnson, G.C., and A.R. Parsons (2015): Overview. In State of the Climate in 2014, Global Oceans. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(7), S59.
Every year NOAA leads a team of international scientists in issuing a report on the state of the climate in the year just passed, published as a supplement to Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Ten Federal, JISAO, and JIMAR scientists resident at PMEL co-authored four of twelve sections and a sidebar in the Global Oceans chapter and a section in the Arctic chapter for the State of the Climate in 2014 report, published in July 2015. In addition, Dr. Gregory... more »
Sampling Arctic waters: research cruise on USCG cutter Healy. (Mathis/NOAA)
Mathis, J.T., J.N. Cross, W. Evans, and S.C. Doney. 2015. Ocean acidification in the surface waters of the Pacific-Arctic boundary regions. Oceanography 28(2):122–135, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2015.36.
Chukchi and Beaufort Seas could become less hospitable to shelled animals by 2030
New research by NOAA, University of Alaska, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the journal Oceanography shows that surface waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could reach levels of acidity that threaten the ability... more »
,North America: Warmer Arctic Temperatures Can Reinforce Wavy Jet Stream
Asia: Arctic-Midlatitude Weather Linkages
Overland, J.E., J. Francis, R. Hall, E. Hanna, S.-J. Kim, and T. Vihma (2015): The melting Arctic and mid-latitude weather patterns: Are they connected? J. Climate, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00822.1
It is too soon to know if recent extreme cold weather such as the last two East Coast winters are linked to Arctic climate warming, according to new research published in the Journal of Climate by James Overland of NOAA, and other authors from North America, Asia and Europe.
“We are in the pre-consensus stage of a theory that there are links between the rapid warming of the Arctic and some severe weather events since 2007,” said Overland, lead author of “The melting Arctic and Mid-latitude weather patterns: Are they connected?”
He added that “new studies on the... more »