Coastal warming and wind-driven upwelling: A global analysis

Rubén Varela; Fernando P Lima; Rui Seabra; Claudia Meneghesso; Moncho Gómez-Gesteira

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.05.273

Coastal warming and wind-driven upwelling: A global analysis

Sci Total Environ. 2018 Oct 15:639:1501-1511. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.05.273. Epub 2018 May 29.

Authors

Rubén Varela¹, Fernando P Lima², Rui Seabra², Claudia Meneghesso², Moncho Gómez-Gesteira³

Affiliations

¹ EPHYSLAB, Environmental PHYsics LABoratory, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Vigo, Ourense, Spain. Electronic address: ruvarela@uvigo.es.
² CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal.
³ EPHYSLAB, Environmental PHYsics LABoratory, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Vigo, Ourense, Spain.

PMID: 29929313
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.05.273

Abstract

Long-term sea surface temperature (SST) warming trends are far from being homogeneous, especially when coastal and ocean locations are compared. Using data from NOAA's AVHRR OISST, we have analyzed sea surface temperature trends over the period 1982-2015 at around 3500 worldwide coastal points and their oceanic counterparts with a spatial resolution of 0.25 arc-degrees. Significant warming was observed at most locations although with important differences between oceanic and coastal points. This is especially patent for upwelling regions, where 92% of the coastal locations showed lower warming trends than at neighboring ocean locations. This result strongly suggests that upwelling has the potential to buffer the effects of global warming nearshore, with wide oceanographic, climatic, and biogeographic implications.

Keywords: Buffering; Cooling; SST; Upwelling; Warming.