Impact of Pacific Ocean heatwaves on phytoplankton community composition
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2023-03-13
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Citation of Original Publication
Arteaga, L.A., Rousseaux, C.S. "Impact of Pacific Ocean heatwaves on phytoplankton community composition" Commun Biol 6, no. 263 (13 March, 2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04645-0.
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This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
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Abstract
Since 2013, marine heatwaves have become recurrent throughout the equatorial and
northeastern Pacific Ocean and are expected to increase in intensity relative to historic
norms. Among the ecological ramifications associated with these high temperature anomalies are increased mortality of higher trophic organisms such as marine mammals and seabirds, which are likely triggered by changes in the composition of phytoplankton, the base of
the marine trophic food web. Here, we assimilated satellite ocean color data into an ocean
biogeochemical model to describe changes in the abundance of phytoplankton functional
types (PFTs) during the last decade’s (2010s) warm anomalies in the equatorial and
northeastern Pacific Ocean. We find important changes associated with the “Blob” warm
anomaly in the Gulf of Alaska, where reduced silica supply led to a switch in community
composition from diatoms to dinoflagellates, resulting in an increase in surface ocean
chlorophyll during the Summer–Fall of 2014. A more dramatic change was observed in the
equatorial Pacific, where the extreme warm conditions of the 2016 El Niño resulted in a major
decline of about 40% in surface chlorophyll, which was associated with a nearly total collapse
in diatoms