Welcome to what I hope is a unique resource on the Web. I have created this Web site to concentrate information related to North Pacific Interdecadal Climate Variability and its ecological effects. The impetus for this effort is a proposal I wrote (and that was funded) to study Climate Change and Halibut Biology. While the subject matter is interdecadal, I hope the update time frame is synoptic. I would appreciate any additional information you have that would be appropriate on these pages and, of course, I would like to be informed of any inaccurate, outdated or inoperative links.
Interdecadal climate variability is a hot research topic. While long term climate variability has long been studied, the focus has tended to be on either longer time scales (e.g., ice age) or shorter time scales (El Nino Southern Oscillation (~ 4-6 yr periodicity), Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (~ 2 yr periodicity)). My research interests, and the focus of this web site, is variability on a time scale of 5-50 years. Much of the current interest in interdecadal-scale variability stems from the, now widely recognized, climate "regime shift" of 1976/77. That event dramatically changed the general climate of the North Pacific across the entire basin north of roughly 30°N. It has also become highly evident that much of the biota of the North Pacific responded to the climatic regime shift. In these pages, you can find many references and some on-line papers describing the physical and biological changes associated with that event.
Once one adopts a regime-cognizant point of view, a large number of questions naturally arise. To me, three of immediate interest are
1. Was the 1976/77 event unique?
2. Has the regime that began in 1976/77 ended and a new, different, regime begun?
3. What are the mechanisms linking large-scale climate and ecosystem response.
Of course, many people are interested in these questions. Explore this web site and you will find many of them, read of their work, and see where their research is taking them.