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Title
Ecological impacts of the 2015/16 El Niño in the Central Equatorial Pacific
Author(s)
Brainard, Russell E.;Oliver, Thomas ;McPhaden, Michael J.;Cohen, Anne ;Venegas, Roberto;Heenan, Adel ;Vargas-Angel, Bernardo;Rotjan, Randi;Mangubhai, Sangeeta;Flint, Elizabeth;Hunter, Susan A.
Published
2018
Publisher
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Published Version DOI
https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0128.1
Abstract
Coral reef and seabird communities in the central equatorial Pacific were disrupted by record-setting sea surface temperatures, linked to an anthropogenically forced trend, during the 2015/16 El Niño. In the equatorial Pacific Ocean, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation substantially affects atmospheric and oceanic conditions on interannual time scales. The central and eastern equatorial Pacific fluctuates between anomalously warm and nutrient-poor El Niño and anomalously cool and nutrient-rich La Niña conditions (Chavez et al. 1999; McPhaden et al. 2006; Gierach et al. 2012). El Niño events are characterized by an eastward expansion of the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) and deepening of the thermocline and nutricline in response to weakening trade winds (Strutton and Chavez 2000; Turk et al. 2001). El Niño events are typically associated with significant decreases in primary productivity in the eastern and central tropical Pacific and corresponding increases in productivity in the western tropical Pacific (Boyce et al. 2010).
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PUB23916