The black dots denote Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) site locations discussed in the text. (a) Modern sea surface temperature map of the Northwest Pacific region characterized by two western boundary currents, the Kuroshio Current and its Extension (KCE) as part of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and the Oyashio Current as part of the North Pacific Subpolar Gyre. Thus, understanding how these complex systems have responded to past warming and will respond to anthropogenic climate change scenarios has significant implications for predicting and mitigating future impacts on weather patterns, local biodiversity, and the human food supply.įigure 1. Currently, fish stocks are declining in some of these areas, with decreases mostly attributed to the increase in WBC sea surface temperatures (Noto and Yasuda, 2011). Due to their high biological abundance and diversity, these currents are vastly important resources for countries with robust fishing industries. The WBC ecotones support rich ecosystems that contain some of the highest biodiversity in today’s world ocean (Tittensor et al., 2010), making them regions of significant biologic importance. Mixing of subpolar and subtropical water masses creates an ecotone, a region of overlap between biological communities. Subtropical WBCs meet their subpolar WBC counterparts in the mid-latitudes, leading to sharp temperature and nutrient gradients ( Figure 1a). WBCs of subtropical gyres transport heat, moisture, salt, and gases from the tropical ocean poleward, creating ocean-atmosphere interactions that impact regional weather patterns. These fast-moving, deep, and narrow wind-driven surface currents rim the subpolar and subtropical ocean gyres. The most prominent features of the marine circulation system, the western boundary currents (WBCs), flow along the western edges of the major ocean basins.
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