Modern California current system and radiolarian responses to normal (anti-El Nino) conditions
The modern California Current is a relatively wide, slow, southward flow of cold, low-salinity water subject to considerable seasonal upwelling and other seasonal and supraseasonal perturbations. The radiolarian fauna contained within these waters reflects the parameters and perturbations common to eastern boundary currents. Radiolarian faunas characteristic of the California Current (subarctic and transitional waters), the offshore gyre (North Pacific anticyclonic subtropical gyre), the eastern tropical Pacific, and underlying intermediate and deep waters have been documented and characterized. During normal (anti-El Nino) conditions within the California Current system, the following physical oceanographic changes (and their characteristic radiolarian responses) occur. Spring and summer are dominated by the strongest southerly flow of the California Current - with high-standing crops of subarctic and transitional radiolarians in the core of that current - whose core is seaward of the southern California continental borderland. Spring and summer are also periods of strongest upwelling, with deeper radiolarians appearing at or near the surface. During fall and into winter, the California Current slows and a coastal countercurrent, the Davidson Current, develops. Radiolarians indicate that a much reduced core of the California Current swings in over the southern California continental borderland, and that faunas from the south are brought northward near the shore.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of San Diego, CA
- OSTI ID:
- 6966451
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-8604187-
- Journal Information:
- Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol., Bull.; (United States), Vol. 70:4; Conference: American Association of Petroleum Geologist Pacific Section convention, Bakersfield, CA, USA, 16 Apr 1986
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
58 GEOSCIENCES
PROTOZOA
BASELINE ECOLOGY
SEASONAL VARIATIONS
CLIMATES
PACIFIC OCEAN
WATER CURRENTS
ANIMALS
CURRENTS
ECOLOGY
INVERTEBRATES
MICROORGANISMS
SEAS
SURFACE WATERS
VARIATIONS
520100* - Environment
Aquatic- Basic Studies- (-1989)
580100 - Geology & Hydrology- (-1989)