ANALYSIS OF NEAR-SHORE SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES IN THE NORTHERN PACIFIC AND IMPLICATIONS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

Abstract : Recent studies report a warming trend in Pacific Ocean temperatures over the last 50 years. However, much less is known about temperature change in the near-coastal environment, which is particularly sensitive to climatic change. In near-shore regions in situ sea surface temperature (SST) measurements are typically made via buoy; however, these are irregular in both space and time. Therefore, we are exploring the use of remote sensing data in near-coastal regions for climate change analyses in coastal and estuarine environments at regional and basin scales. Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) SST raster data were processed to isolate sea surface temperature values along the coastal regions in the Northern Pacific Ocean. Our data represent a time-series of monthly mean temperatures over the last 30 years. Despite challenges related to cloud cover and land signal contamination at the coast-sea interface, structured and unstructured analyses of spatial and temporal patterns of the coastal SST data can reveal trends in susceptible coastal regions. Further analysis of these remote sensing SST data will relate existing distributions of near-coastal species in the Northeast Pacific to temperature regimes in order to develop models to predict change in biotic distributions and ecosystem services in response to climate change.