The Surprising Oceanography of the Gulf of Maine
Published in Maine Policy Review, 32(2), Our Shared Ocean, 2023
Recommended citation: Record, N.R., Tupper, B., Evanilla, J., Oliveira, K.S., Ngai, L., Ross, C.H., & Stamieszkin, K. (2023). "The Surprising Oceanography of the Gulf of Maine." Maine Policy Review, 32(2), 20–28.
The Gulf of Maine has recently undergone oceanographic changes unlike anything seen previously, but which are likely to become more common in the future. This paper reviews historical oceanographic surprises in the Gulf of Maine — from the 1815 Tambora eruption through the 2004–2014 extreme rapid warming event — and applies a formal statistical definition of oceanographic surprise to multidecadal physical and biological time series. The analysis finds that the frequency of surprises in the Gulf of Maine is higher, and has increased faster, than expected even accounting for underlying long-term trends, with phytoplankton-associated time series showing especially high surprise frequencies. The authors argue that marine policy should account for scenarios of sudden, unexpected environmental change in addition to gradual long-term trends.
Recommended citation: Record, N.R., Tupper, B., Evanilla, J., Oliveira, K.S., Ngai, L., Ross, C.H., & Stamieszkin, K. (2023). “The Surprising Oceanography of the Gulf of Maine.” Maine Policy Review, 32(2), 20–28.