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Salinity effects on the 2014 warm “Blob” in the Northeast Pacific

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Abstract

A significant strong, warm “Blob” (a large circular water body with a positive ocean temperature anomaly) appeared in the Northeast Pacific (NEP) in the boreal winter of 2013–2014, which induced many extreme climate events in the US and Canada. In this study, analyses of the temperature and salinity anomaly variations from the Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography (Argo) data provided insights into the formation of the warm “Blob” over the NEP. The early negative salinity anomaly dominantly contributed to the shallower mixed layer depth (MLD) in the NEP during the period of 2012–2013. Then, the shallower mixed layer trapped more heat in the upper water column and resulted in a warmer sea surface temperature (SST), which enhanced the warm “Blob”. The salinity variability contributed to approximately 60% of the shallowing MLD related to the warm “Blob”. The salinity anomaly in the warm “Blob” region resulted from a combination of both local and nonlocal effects. The freshened water at the surface played a local role in the MLD anomaly. Interestingly, the MLD anomaly was more dependent on the local subsurface salinity anomaly in the 100–150 m depth range in the NEP. The salinity anomaly in the 50–100 m depth range may be linked to the anomaly in the 100–150 m depth range by vertical advection or mixing. The salinity anomaly in the 100–150 m depth range resulted from the eastward transportation of a subducted water mass that was freshened west of the dateline, which played a nonlocal role. The results suggest that the early salinity anomaly in the NEP related to the warm “Blob” may be a precursor signal of interannual and interdecadal variabilities.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks for the suggestions and comments from two reviewers. We are thankful to ocean data providers such as IPRC (Argo data) and APDRC, NOAA, etc., and FERRET using graphical presentation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Hai Zhi

  2. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Pengfei Lin & Hailong Liu

  3. College of Earth Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Pengfei Lin & Hailong Liu

  4. Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Waves, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Rong-Hua Zhang

  5. State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou, 310012, China

    Fei Chai

  6. School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, 04469-5706, USA

    Fei Chai

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  1. Hai Zhi
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  2. Pengfei Lin
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Correspondence to Pengfei Lin.

Additional information

Foundation item: The National Key Research and Development Program for Developing Basic Sciences under contract Nos 2016YFC1401601 and 2016YFC1401401; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 41376026, 41690122, 41690120 and 41475101; the NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers under contract No. U1406401; the NSFC Innovative Group Grant under contract No. 41421005; the Taishan Scholarship.

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Zhi, H., Lin, P., Zhang, RH. et al. Salinity effects on the 2014 warm “Blob” in the Northeast Pacific. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 38, 24–34 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-019-1450-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-019-1450-2

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