Marine heatwaves in the Bay of Plenty.

Abstract

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are a contemporary threat to ocean ecosystems and industry, with profound effects for various species such as increased mortality, range adjustment and alteration of spawning patterns. Work has been undertaken to understand the characteristics of these events and the processes that drive them. However, the bulk of this research has focused on surface MHWs partially due to paucity of sufficient subsurface observations.

We investigated a MHW event occurring in the Bay of Plenty during Summer of 2021/2022 which was fortuitously well-observed in situ by the newly-implemented Mangōpare sensor programme. This is a key first demonstration of the capability of this novel data platform to observe oceanographic phenomena through the water column remotely, using crowd-sourcing for data collection. These novel data revealed the event was initially surface-constrained, followed by intensification and downwards progression through the whole water column, something that to date has been rarely observed with in situ data and is completely missed by remotely sensed satellite SST data. The drivers of this event were then considered by undertaking a heat budget analysis for the region, using output from a numerical model. Results from this heat budget analysis will be discussed during the presentation.

When

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