Unpublished conference/Abstract (Scientific congresses and symposiums)Detection of marine heatwaves in a coastal area: the case study of the semi-enclosed inner seas of North Patagonia
Pujol, Cécile; Pérez Santos, Iván; Barth, Alexander et al.
2022 • 6to. Congreso de Oceanografía Física, Meteorología y Clima del Pacifico Sur Oriental
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Abstract :
[en] Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are described as discrete warm-anomalies events. They can develop in every ocean, in both coastal and open-ocean environments. Despite the interest from the scientific community in MHWs, their occurrence and development in coastal environments remains poorly studied, principally due to the lack of adequate data. Indeed, the detection of MHWs is based on the comparaision between local sea surface temperature (SST) to a long-term climatology, generally based on satellite data. However, in complex coastal environments, the use of satellite data might not be optimal due to the interference with land systems and to insufficient temporal coverage with high resolution data. In this study, we aimed to detect the MHWs in semi-enclosed seas, having as a case study the inner seas of North Patagonia. This environment is characterised by narrow fjords and channels and a cloudy and rainy climate that makes it difficult to build a long-term high-resolution climatology with satellite data. However, the inner seas of North Pagagonia have been quite well sampled across the years, with measurements realised since 1950s, spatially scattered in all the regions at both surface and depth (including fjords and channels). Therefore, we choose to build our climatology using those in situ measurements, by interpolating them in order to have a continuous field. For this purpose, we used DIVAnd (Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis) which allows to spatially interpolate in an optimal way discrete observations onto a regular grid, taking advantage of the information in the 4 dimensions. With DIVAnd, we realised a monthly climatology at 32 different depths, from the surface to 400m. MHWs were then detected in two distinct fjords by comparing the climatology to the local SST from anchored buoys: one in Reloncaví Sound (SST data from 2017 to 2022) and the second in Puyuhuapi fjord (SST data from 2010 to 2018).
