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The Benguela Upwelling System in the southeast Atlantic Ocean is of crucial socio-economic importance due to its high productivity. However, predicting its response to global change and understanding past changes are still great challenges. Here, we compile data obtained from a research cruise and an oceanographic mooring to demonstrate that a topographically steered nutrient trapping zone develops in a narrow belt along the coast during the main upwelling season in austral spring and summer in the southern Benguela Upwelling System. High nutrient concentrations within this zone increase the impact of upwelling on the productivity of the southern Benguela Upwelling System, but the efficient nutrient trapping operates at the expense of decreasing oxygen concentrations. This enhances the probability of anoxic events emerging toward the end of the upwelling season. However, at the end of the upwelling season, the front that separates the coastally trapped waters from open shelf waters weakens or even collapses due to upwelling cessation and the reversing current regime. This, in addition to a stronger vertical mixing caused by winter cooling, fosters the ventilation of the nutrient trapping zone, which reestablishes during the following upwelling season. The postulated intensification of upwelling and changes in the ecosystem structure in response to global warming seem to reduce the nutrient trapping efficiency by increasing offshore advection of surface waters and plankton blooms. The intensified upwelling and resulting lower biological oxygen consumption appears to mask the expected impacts of global warming on the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) in the southern Benguela Upwelling System. In contrast to other OMZs, including those in northern Benguela Upwelling Systems, the OMZ in the southern Benguela Upwelling System reveals so far no detectable long-term decrease in oxygen. Thus, the nutrient trapping efficiency seems to be a critical feature mitigating global change impacts on the southern Benguela Upwelling System. Since it is topographically steered, regional impacts on the nutrient trapping efficiency appear also to explain varying responses of upwelling systems to global change as the comparison between southern and northern Benguela Upwelling System shows. This emphasizes the need for further and more comparable studies in order to better understand the response of Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems and their ecosystem services to global change.

Surface wind is taken as the primary driver of upwelling in the eastern boundary upwelling systems. The fluctuation of momentum flux associated with the variation in wind regulates the nutrient supply to the euphotic surface layer via changing the properties of oceanic mixed layer depth, the coastal and offshore upwelling, and horizontal advection. Here, the spatial and temporal variability of the surface wind field over the last seven decades across the Peruvian upwelling system is investigated. Strong fluctuations in seasonal to decadal timescales are found over the entire upwelling system. A semi-periodic wind fluctuation on an interannual timescale is found, which is closely related to the regional sea surface temperature and can be attributed to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). However, the wind anomaly patterns during positive and negative phases of ENSO are not opposite, which suggests an asymmetric response of local wind to ENSO cycles. In addition, a semi-regular fluctuation on the decadal timescale is evident in the wind field, which can be attributed to the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Our results show that the sea surface temperature over the Humboldt Upwelling System is closely connected to local wind stress and the wind stress curl. The SST wind stress co-variability seems more pronounced in the coastal upwelling cells, in which equatorward winds are very likely accompanied by robust cooling over the coastal zones. Over the past seven decades, wind speed underwent a slightly positive trend. However, the spatial pattern of the trend features considerable heterogeneity with larger values near the coastal upwelling cells.

A major challenge in understanding the oceanic carbon cycle is estimating the sinking flux of organic carbon exiting the sunlit surface ocean, termed carbon export. Existing algorithms derive carbon export from satellite ocean color, but neglect spatiotemporal offsets created by the temporal lag between production and export, and by horizontal advection. Here, we show that a Lagrangian “growth‐advection” (GA) satellite‐derived product, where plankton succession and export are mapped onto surface oceanic circulation following coastal upwelling, succeeds in representing in situ export off the California coast. In situ export is best represented by a combination of GA export (proportional to modeled zooplankton) and export derived from ocean color (related to local phytoplankton). Both products also correlate with a long‐term time series of abyssal carbon flux. These results provide insights on export spatiotemporal patterns and a path toward improving satellite‐derived carbon export in the California Current and beyond. Plain Language Summary Climate on Earth is strongly tied to the carbon cycle, which regulates atmospheric CO2 concentration. A key component of the oceanic carbon cycle is the downward flux of organic carbon outside of the surface sunlit layer, termed carbon export, which can ultimately sink to the bottom of the ocean and be sequestered for hundreds of years. Direct measurements of carbon export are scarce, so that models and satellite data are needed to understand large‐scale patterns. Because organic carbon originates from phytoplankton fixing CO2 in the ocean surface via photosynthesis, satellite‐derived algorithms have been developed by relying primarily on phytoplankton ocean color data. However, such models display poor accuracy. One reason is that they neglect the time elapsed between photosynthesis and carbon export, which can result in a spatial offset of hundreds of kilometers. Our study explicitly considers these offsets and shows that export can also be well represented from space without ocean color, using a plankton model and satellite‐derived oceanic currents. These results provide new insights on what controls carbon export, how to represent it from space, and its spatiotemporal patterns in a productive oceanic region. Key Points Coastal upwelling, advection, and plankton dynamics explain variability in surface carbon export by sinking particles A Lagrangian growth‐advection satellite model performs as well as export derived from ocean color both for surface and abyssal carbon fluxes Satellite‐derived export products need to consider offsets between production and export, and the role of zooplankton and advection

Ecosystem productivity in coastal ocean upwelling systems is threatened by climate change. Increases in spring and summer upwelling intensity, and associated increases in the rate of offshore advection, are expected. While this could counter effects of habitat warming, it could also lead to more frequent hypoxic events and lower densities of suitable-sized food particles for fish larvae. With upwelling intensification, ocean acidity will rise, affecting organisms with carbonate structures. Regardless of changes in upwelling, near-surface stratification, turbulent diffusion rates, source water origins, and perhaps thermocline depths associated with large-scale climate episodes (ENSO) maybe affected. Major impacts on pelagic fish resources appear unlikely unless couples with overfishing, although changes toward more subtropical community composition are likely. Marine mammals and seabirds that are tied to sparsely distributed nesting or resting grounds could experience difficulties in obtaining prey resources, or adaptively respond by moving to more favorable biogeographic provinces.

In this study, we analysed the structure and functioning of the Portuguese continental shelf ecosystem and investigated the role of sardine Sardina pilchardus using the Ecopath mass-balance approach. An Ecopath model was configured to represent the continental shelf waters in the period 2006–2009. The model showed that biomass was concentrated in low and intermediate trophic levels as in other upwelling areas. Several low- and medium-trophic-level groups were identified as dominant groups in the ecosystem (e.g. zooplankton, macrozoobenthos, sardine, chub mackerel Scomber colias, and demersal and benthopelagic invertivorous fish). Furthermore, low-trophic-level groups were responsible for the main energy flows, and overall higher impact on the ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of bottom-up control of the ecosystem structure. Our results are relevant to understand structure and functioning of this ecosystem and constitute an important step towards an ecosystem approach to fisheries management in the study area.

Biological nitrogen fixation is a key process balancing the loss of combined nitrogen in the marine nitrogen cycle. Its relevance in upwelling or high nutrient regions is still unclear, with the few available studies in these regions of the ocean reporting rates that vary widely from below detection limit to > 100 nmol N L−1 d−1. In the eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean, two open ocean upwelling systems are active in boreal summer. One is the seasonal equatorial upwelling, where the residual phosphorus associated with aged upwelled waters is suggested to enhance nitrogen fixation in this season. The other is the Guinea Dome, a thermal upwelling dome. We conducted two surveys along 23° W across the Guinea Dome and the Equator from 15° N to 5° S in September 2015 and August–September 2016 with high latitudinal resolution (20–60 nm between stations). The abundance of Trichodesmium colonies was characterized by an Underwater Vision Profiler 5 and the total biological nitrogen fixation in the euphotic layer was measured using the 15N2 technique. The highest abundances of Trichodesmium colonies were found in the area of the Guinea Dome (9°–15° N) with a maximum of 3 colonies L−1 near the surface. By contrast, colonies were almost absent in the Equatorial band between 2° N and 5° S. The highest nitrogen fixation rate was measured at the northern edge of the Guinea Dome in 2016 (ca. 31 nmol N L−1 d−1). In this region, where diazotrophs thrived on a sufficient supply of both phosphorus and iron, a patchy distribution was unveiled by our increased spatial resolution scheme. In the Equatorial band, rates were considerably lower, ranging from below detection limit to ca. 4 nmol N L−1 d−1, with a clear difference in magnitude between 2015 (rates close to zero) and 2016 (average rates around 2 nmol N L−1 d−1). This difference seemed triggered by a contrasting supply of phosphorus between years. Our study stresses the importance of surveys with sampling at fine-scale spatial resolution, and shows unexpected high variability in the rates of nitrogen fixation in the Guinea Dome, a region where diazotrophy is a significant process supplying new nitrogen into the euphotic layer.

The Peruvian upwelling system (PUS) is the most productive Eastern Boundary Upwelling System (EBUS) of the world ocean. Contrarily to higher latitude EBUSs, there is no consensus yet on the response of upwelling-favorable winds to regional climate change in this region. Global climate models are not able to reproduce the nearshore surface winds, and only a few downscaling studies have been performed by using relatively coarse-grid atmospheric models forced by idealized climate change scenarios. In the present study, the impact of climate change on the PUS upwelling-favorable winds was assessed using a high resolution regional atmospheric model to dynamically downscale the multi-model mean projection of an ensemble of 31 CMIP5 global models under the RCP8.5 worst-case climate scenario. We performed a 10-year retrospective simulation (1994–2003) forced by NCEP2 reanalysis data and a 10-year climate change simulation forced by a climate change forcing (i.e. differences between monthly-mean climatologies for 2080–2100 and 1989–2009) from CMIP5 ensemble added to NCEP2 data. We found that changes in the mean upwelling-favorable winds are weak (less than 0.2 m s −1 ). Seasonally, summer winds weakly decrease (by 0–5%) whereas winter winds weakly increase (by 0–10%), thus slightly reinforcing the seasonal cycle. A momentum balance shows that the wind changes are mainly driven by the alongshore pressure gradient, except in a local area north of the Paracas peninsula, downstream the main upwelling center, where wind increase in winter is driven by the shoreward advection of offshore momentum. Sensitivity experiments show that the north–south sea surface temperature gradient plays an important role in the wind response along the north and central coasts, superimposed onto the South Pacific Anticyclone large-scale forcing. A reduction (increase) of the gradient induces a wind weakening (strengthening) up to 15% (25%) off the northern coast during summer. This local mechanism is not well represented in global climate models projections, which underlines the strong need for dynamical downscaling of coastal wind in order to study the impact of climate change on the Peruvian upwelling ecosystem.

Coastal upwelling dynamics are strongly affected by alongshore wind stress and nearshore wind stress curl. A coupled physical‐biogeochemical regional model and lagrangian diagnostics are used in the Peru current system to determine how the upwelling of nutrients and the primary productivity are impacted by the spatial structure of the nearshore wind stress. Three wind stress products derived from the ERS and QuikSCAT scatterometers and a smoothed QuikSCAT field, mainly differing in nearshore wind stress curl patterns, were used. Simulations are found to produce significantly different mean surface chlorophyll distributions and show that strong upwelling‐favorable nearshore wind stress curl may locally induce a wide coastal productive zone through upwelling of nutrient‐replete waters brought by a shoaling coastal undercurrent. Using wind stress products with realistic nearshore patterns is therefore crucial for the modeling of coupled physical‐biogeochemical coastal processes.

Given the ecological and economic importance of eastern boundary upwelling systems like the California Current System (CCS), their evolution under climate change is of considerable interest for resource management. However, the spatial resolution of global earth system models (ESMs) is typically too coarse to properly resolve coastal winds and upwelling dynamics that are key to structuring these ecosystems. Here we use a high-resolution (0.1°) regional ocean circulation model coupled with a biogeochemical model to dynamically downscale ESMs and produce climate projections for the CCS under the high emission scenario, Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5. To capture model uncertainty in the projections, we downscale three ESMs: GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, and IPSL-CM5A-MR, which span the CMIP5 range for future changes in both the mean and variance of physical and biogeochemical CCS properties. The forcing of the regional ocean model is constructed with a “time-varying delta” method, which removes the mean bias of the ESM forcing and resolves the full transient ocean response from 1980 to 2100. We found that all models agree in the direction of the future change in offshore waters: an intensification of upwelling favorable winds in the northern CCS, an overall surface warming, and an enrichment of nitrate and corresponding decrease in dissolved oxygen below the surface mixed layer. However, differences in projections of these properties arise in the coastal region, producing different responses of the future biogeochemical variables. Two of the models display an increase of surface chlorophyll in the northern CCS, consistent with a combination of higher nitrate content in source waters and an intensification of upwelling favorable winds. All three models display a decrease of chlorophyll in the southern CCS, which appears to be driven by decreased upwelling favorable winds and enhanced stratification, and, for the HadGEM2-ES forced run, decreased nitrate content in upwelling source waters in nearshore regions. While trends in the downscaled models reflect those in the ESMs that force them, the ESM and downscaled solutions differ more for biogeochemical than for physical variables.

Future projections of southwestern African hydroclimate are highly uncertain. However, insights from past warm climates, like the Pliocene, can reveal mechanisms of future change and help benchmark models. Using leaf wax hydrogen isotopes to reconstruct precipitation (δDp) from Namibia over the past 5 million years, we find a long‐term depletion trend (−50‰). Empirical mode decomposition indicates this trend is linked to sea surface temperatures (SSTs) within the Benguela Upwelling System, but modulated by Indian Ocean SSTs on shorter timescales. The influence of SSTs on reconstructed regional hydroclimate is similar to that observed during modern Benguela Nin∼$\\tilde{n}$ o events, which bring extreme flooding to the region. Isotope‐enabled simulations and PlioMIP2 results suggest that capturing a Benguela Nin∼$\\tilde{n}$ o‐like state is key to accurately simulating Pliocene, and future, regional hydroclimate. This has implications for future regional climate, since an increased frequency of Benguela Nin∼$\\tilde{n}$ os poses risk to the ecosystems and industries in the region. Plain Language Summary Rainfall in southwestern Africa will likely be impacted by human‐caused climate change, but climate models disagree on whether the region will get wetter or drier as the planet warms. Previous studies, which used plant pollen preserved in ocean sediment, tell us that southwestern Africa was wetter during the Pliocene, a warm period approximately 5.3 to 2.5 million‐years‐ago, and got drier over time as Earth cooled. This drying is thought to be caused by a concurrent decrease in temperatures within the eastern South Atlantic Ocean. In this study we measure hydrogen isotopes in ancient plant matter and use statistical tools which indicate that rainfall patterns in southwestern Africa are also impacted by changes in Indian Ocean temperatures. This combined Atlantic and Indian Ocean influence is similar to events that we observe in modern times where areas of arid southwestern Africa get short bouts of very strong rainfall when the coastal waters warm. The area that gets strong rainfall depends on where the warm water occurs along the western coast and whether there's also warmer‐ or colder‐than‐normal water in the Indian Ocean. If the Pliocene ocean temperature patterns resembled these events, we may need to do further studies to determine whether they will become more common in the future. Key Points Plio‐Pleistocene changes in the hydrogen stable isotopic signature of leaf waxes from Southern Africa are linked to Benguela temperatures Higher frequency shifts in the record are likely driven by Indian Ocean temperatures via a mechanism observed in the modern Isotope‐enabled simulations suggest that capturing this mechanism may be key to accurately simulating past and future regional hydroclimate