资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Climate patterns drive broad-scale patterns of ocean ecosystem productivity. However, the mechanistic connections between regional climate variability and ocean ecosystem responses are not well understood for much of the ocean. By analyzing multi-decadal atmospheric and oceanic data over the North Atlantic Ocean, we show that the subtropical spring bloom variability is connected to winter Greenland blocking events. The blocking enforces a southward shift of the eddy-driven jet stream, inducing higher surface westerly winds, causing deeper vertical mixing in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean in winter and promotes larger spring blooms. These findings reveal the physical mechanisms connecting a predominant climate variability mode in the Arctic with variability in the subtropical spring bloom and highlight the importance of ocean-atmosphere coupling in shaping the response of oceanic ecosystems to climate variability. Our results also imply a potential teleconnection between rapid Arctic warming over Greenland and phytoplankton variability in the subtropical North Atlantic.