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Climate Change and Marine Ecosystem
Climate Change and Marine Ecosystem
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1217112109
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ind
ITCZ
Tra
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Diatoms
Cariaco
Zooplankton
Fish
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Fig. 1. Schematic showing the annual southward position of the InterTropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ),
associated trade winds that drive coastal upwelling in the southeast Caribbean off Venezuela, and the
rich ecosystem that develops. The average annual position of the ITCZ has been moving northward since
the Little Ice Age at an average rate of 1.5 km/y (2), a rate that may have accelerated recently (4). As the
average southward position of the ITCZ moves north over the Caribbean, the winds that drive coastal
upwelling weaken, the coastal ocean warms, and primary productivity decreases with cascading effects
through the entire ecosystem (3). The leakage of organic carbon resulting from primary production and
the pelagic food web into the oceans interior acts to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide to the deep
ocean; enigmatic results from the Cariaco time series show that there are still uncertainties about how
this biological pump of carbon operates and how it will respond to future changes in climate.
E-mail: chfr@mbari.org.
how this biological pump of carbon operates is critical to elucidating the changing
role of marine ecosystems in the global
carbon cycle (Fig. 1). A second surprise
that Taylor et al. (4) nd is punctuated step
function decreases in the abundance of
critical taxonomic groups. Whereas sea
surface temperature has increased and
primary production decreased steadily, the
abundance of the microscopic primary
producers (including diatoms, dinoagellates, and coccolithophorids) and
sardines show a stepwise decrease close to
6. Margalef R (1978) What is an upwelling ecosystem? Upwelling Ecosystems, eds Boje R, Tomczak M (Springer,
Berlin), pp 1214.
7. Chavez FP, Messi M, Pennington JT (2011) Marine primary production in relation to climate variability and
change. Annu Rev Mar Sci 3:227260.
19046 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1217112109
Chavez