Slowing down of North Pacific climate variability and its implications for abrupt ecosystem change

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Chris A Boulton, Timothy M Lenton

Abstract

Marine ecosystems are sensitive to stochastic environmental variability, with higher-amplitude, lower-frequency--i.e., "redder"--variability posing a greater threat of triggering large ecosystem changes. Here we show that fluctuations in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index have slowed down markedly over the observational record (1900-present), as indicated by a robust increase in autocorrelation. This "reddening" of the spectrum of climate variability is also found in regionally averaged North Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and can be at least partly explained by observed deepening of the ocean mixed layer. The progressive reddening of North Pacific climate variability has important implications for marine ecosystems. Ecosystem variables that respond linearly to climate forcing will have become prone to much larger variations over the observational record, whereas ecosystem variables that respond nonlinearly to climate forcing will have become prone to more frequent "regime shifts." Thus, slowing down of North Pacific climate variability can help explain the large magnitude and potentially the quick succession of well-known abrupt changes in North Pacific ecosystems in 1977 and 1989. When looking ahead, despit...Continue Reading

References

Oct 12, 2001·Nature·M SchefferB Walker
Mar 16, 2004·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Gregory J McCabeJulio L Betancourt
Sep 9, 2006·Ecology Letters·S R Carpenter, W A Brock
Jan 24, 2013·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Emanuele Di Lorenzo, Mark D Ohman
Mar 19, 2013·Global Change Biology·William J SydemanEmanuele Di Lorenzo

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Citations

May 12, 2016·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Sandeep Ravindran
Jul 4, 2018·Scientific Reports·Mathieu Chevalier, Gaël Grenouillet
Jul 21, 2017·Scientific Reports·Timothy M LentonMarten Scheffer
Oct 1, 2021·Bulletin of Mathematical Biology·Abhishek Mallela, Alan Hastings

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