Recently, a research team consisting of Academician Wu Lixin, Prof. Jing Zhao and Dr. Wang Shengpeng from OUC’s Frontier Science Center of Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System made great advances in the research of eastern boundary currents and climate change. The team applied high-resolution Earth system models to reveal the response and control mechanisms of the major eastern boundary upwelling systems in the oceans to global warming for the first time. The research results were reported online in Nature Communications and Nature Climate Change on 3 January and 31 January.
The global eastern boundary upwelling system contributes 7% of global primary productivity and 20% of fish catch with less than 2% of its area. It is of great importance to elucidating the evolutionary characteristics and regulatory mechanisms of it in the context of global warming for healthy marine ecosystems and the sustainable development of human societies.
This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the response of the world’s four upwelling systems of major eastern boundary to climate change. It shows that the long-term trend of upwelling is no longer dominated by changes in wind field but by changes in transport due to the geostrophic flow, though the wind field-induced offshore transport of Ekman is decisive for the climatic mean state strength of upwelling. Furthermore, it is further shown that while the sea surface temperature increases at a slower speed in the northern hemisphere upwelling systems compared with the wide ocean, the opposite is true for southern hemisphere upwelling systems.
This research is another important progress made by the team in this field. It is of great significance to the promotion of research on the observation, theory and prediction of the oceanic boundary currents, and to the gaining of a deeper understanding for the response and feedback of the oceanic boundary current system to climate change.
