Unravelling Eastern Pacific and Central Pacific ENSO Contributions in South Pacific Chlorophyll-a Variability through Remote Sensing

El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is regarded as the main driver of phytoplankton inter-annual variability. Remotely sensed surface chlorophyll-a (Chl-a), has made it possible to examine phytoplankton variability at a resolution and scale that allows for the investigation of climate signals such a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2013-08, Vol.5 (8), p.4067-4087
Main Authors: Couto, André, Holbrook, Neil, Maharaj, Angela
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Annual variations
Chl-a
Chlorophyll
CP ENSO
El Nino
El Niño
ENSO
EP ENSO
La Niña
MODIS
Modoki
Phytoplankton
primary productivity
Remote sensing
Sea surface temperature
SeaWiFS
Southern Oscillation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is regarded as the main driver of phytoplankton inter-annual variability. Remotely sensed surface chlorophyll-a (Chl-a), has made it possible to examine phytoplankton variability at a resolution and scale that allows for the investigation of climate signals such as ENSO. We provide empirical evidence of an immediate and lagged influence of ENSO on SeaWiFS and MODIS-Aqua derived global Chl-a concentrations. We use 13 years of Chl-a remotely sensed observations along with sea surface temperature (SST) observations across the Tropical and South Pacific to isolate and examine the spatial development of Chl-a anomalies during ENSO: its canonical or eastern Pacific (EP) mode, and El Niño Modoki or central Pacific (CP) mode, using the extended empirical orthogonal function (EEOF) technique. We describe how an EP ENSO phase transition affects Chl-a, and identify an interannual CP mode of variability induced spatial pattern. We argue that when ENSO is analysed as a propagating signal by the EEOF, CP ENSO is found to be more influential on Chl-a interannual to decadal variability than the canonical EP ENSO. Our results cannot confirm the independence of the two ENSO modes but clearly demonstrate that both ENSO flavors manifest a distinct biological response.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs5084067