Chlorophyll Bloom Dynamics and Associations with Mesoscale and Submesoscale Features in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre

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dc.contributor.advisor White, Angelicque
dc.contributor.author Ash, James Patrick
dc.contributor.department Oceanography
dc.date.accessioned 2023-07-11T00:20:53Z
dc.date.available 2023-07-11T00:20:53Z
dc.date.issued 2023
dc.description.degree M.S.
dc.identifier.uri https://hdl.handle.net/10125/105145
dc.subject Biological oceanography
dc.subject Remote sensing
dc.subject Physical oceanography
dc.title Chlorophyll Bloom Dynamics and Associations with Mesoscale and Submesoscale Features in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre
dc.type Thesis
dcterms.abstract Large summer chlorophyll blooms spanning hundreds of square kilometers andpersisting for weeks-months, are consistently observed in satellite records of the Northeast Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG), at an approximate latitude of ~30°N. These blooms occur at a near annual rate, and uniquely within the late summer months of JuneOctober. Understanding the potential impacts and biophysical drivers of these chlorophyll anomalies is both ecologically and climatologically important. These large-scale blooms can export carbon from the upper ocean to the deep ocean and fuel the productive fisheries found in the ecologically important transition zone between the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre and the subpolar gyre. The purpose of this project is to characterize chlorophyll blooms in the NE Pacific Gyre, as well as describe their association with submesoscale and mesoscale features to identify potential physical drivers. First, an analysis of the merged satellite CHL product is done to characterize the magnitude, frequency, and geographic location of chlorophyll blooms in the NPSG. Then the sea level anomaly (SLA) and finite sized Lyapunov exponents (FSLE) were used to identify sub-mesoscale and mesoscale features i.e. fronts, anti-cyclonic eddies, and cyclonic eddies. Through this process, we provide a quantitative characterization of chlorophyll anomalies in the NPSG. Further analyses present a case-study time-series of the 2018 bloom in order to better understand the timeresolved change in phytoplankton biomass and how it relates to physical drivers of biomass growth and accumulation. To achieve this, a generalized additive model (GAM) is used to determine the effects of SLA and SSTA on the CHL anomaly signal of the 2018 plankton bloom.
dcterms.language en
dcterms.publisher University of Hawai'i at Manoa
dcterms.rights All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.
dcterms.type Text
local.identifier.alturi http://dissertations.umi.com/hawii:11762
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