An Analysis of North Pacific Subsurface Temperatures Using State-Space Techniques

TL;DR

This study employs state-space techniques to analyze 47 years of North Pacific subsurface temperature data, revealing major broad-scale trends, regional heterogeneity, and depth-dependent variability patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of state-space and subspace identification methods to characterize long-term subsurface temperature variability in the North Pacific.

Findings

Identification of a basin-wide warming trend post-1980s

Detection of contrasting cooling and warming regions over decades

Revealed depth-dependent differences in temperature variability

Abstract

North Pacific subsurface temperature data from the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation model at 10m, 50m, 75m, 100m and 150m depths, are analyzed using a combination of state-space decomposition and subspace identification techniques to examine the spatial structure of thermal variability within the upper water column. We identify four common trends from our analysis that display the major broad-scale patterns in the North Pacific over a 47 year period (1958-2004): (1) a basin-wide near-surface warming trend that identifies the mid 1980's as a change point from a cooling to a warming trend; (2) a contrasting cooling in the central basin and warming along the coast of North America that began in the early 1970's; (3) a cooling along the transition zone and the west coast of North America that becomes dominant around 1998; (4) and contrasting differences in the subarctic and subtropical gyres displaying differences in processes at each depth. We also provide a detailed analysis of the temperature variability at four chosen locations: 52.5N 142.5W (Gulf of Alaska), 37.5N 172.5W (central basin), 37.5N 137.5W (off coast of California), and 27.5N 137.5W (off coast of Baja California) for both 10m and 150m depths. These results identify subsurface structure, regional heterogeneity, and they also display important differences and similarities in the patterns of subsurface temperature variability when compared to previously published temperature patterns.