Assessment of the Canary current upwelling system in a regionally coupled climate model

Abstract

The Canary current upwelling is one of the major eastern boundary coastal upwelling systems in the world, bearing a high productive ecosystem and commercially important fisheries. The Canary current upwelling system (CCUS) has a large latitudinal extension, usually divided into upwelling zones with different characteristics. Eddies, filaments and other mesoscale processes are known to have an impact in the upwelling productivity, thus for a proper representation of the CCUS and high horizontal resolution are required. Here we assess the CCUS present climate in the atmosphere–ocean regionally coupled model. The regional coupled model presents a global oceanic component with increased horizontal resolution along the northwestern African coast, and its performance over the CCUS is assessed against relevant reanalysis data sets and compared with an ensemble of global climate models (GCMs) and an ensemble of atmosphere-only regional climate models (RCMs) in order to assess the role of the horizontal resolution. The coupled system reproduces the larger scale pattern of the CCUS and its latitudinal and seasonal variability over the coastal band, improving the GCMs outputs. Moreover, it shows a performance comparable to the ensemble of RCMs in representing the coastal wind stress and near-surface air temperature fields, showing the impact of the higher resolution and coupling for CCUS climate modelling. The model is able of properly reproducing mesoscale structures, being able to simulate the upwelling filaments events off Cape Ghir, which are not well represented in most of GCMs. Our results stress the ability of the regionally coupled model to reproduce the larger scale as well as mesoscale processes over the CCUS, opening the possibility to evaluate the climate change signal there with increased confidence.

Major population’s separation area for sardine (Sardina pilchardus) and hake (Merluccius merluccius) revealed using otolith geochemistry on the Atlantic coast of Morocco

“…The Moroccan Atlantic coast located in northwest Africa between 21°N and 36°N (3000 km), is part of the Canary Current Ecosystem and is a highly productive eastern boundary upwelling system (Figure 1) (Vazquez et al, 2022). The coastal geomorphology associated to variable climatic and environmental conditions lead to variable upwelling activities along this coast (Benazzouz et al, 2014).…”

Dakar Niño variability under global warming investigated by a high-resolution regionally coupled model

“…The regionally-coupled model ROM (e.g., Sein et al, 2015) configurations used in this study is the same as in Vazquez et al (2022). It consists of a regional atmospheric component, limited-area Regional Model (REMO, e.g., Jacob, 2001) and global oceanic component, Max-Planck Institute Ocean Model (MPIOM, e.g., Jungclaus et al, 2013;Marsland et al, 2003).…”

“…the limited benefits of model refinement to improve the Canary Current upwelling system. On the other hand, Vazquez et al (2022) suggest that a high-resolution (mesoscale eddy-permitting scale) regional coupled model is able to represent the Canary Current upwelling systems and surface wind field.…”

“…This study, therefore, aims to unveil how the Dakar Niño variability would change in the future climate by adapting the reliable high-resolution regional coupled model used in Vazquez et al (2022). This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 gives details on the regional coupled model, the experimental setup, and the reanalysis data.…”

Assessing the tropical Atlantic biogeochemical processes in the Norwegian Earth System Model

“…The tropical Atlantic Ocean is a region with intense biogeochemical cycling and productive ecosystems resulting in a hotspot for large fisheries (Gregg et al, 2003;Menard et al, 2000). In particular, the characteristics of the marine ecosystems in the tropical Atlantic are manifested by the high marine biological production along the west African coast associated with the Canary and the Benguela upwelling systems (Hutchings et al, 2009;Santos et al, 2007;Shannon et al, 2004;Vazquez et al, 2022). Another key driver of the marine ecosystem in the tropical Atlantic is riverine flux from the great rivers like the Congo and Amazon Rivers (Araujo et al, 2014;Bouillon et al, 2012;Demaster and Pope, 1996;Moreira-Turcq et al, 2003;Vieira et al, 2020).…”