| The North
Pacific is located at east side of the Asian Continent and
large ocean occupied about 20-30% of the world ocean. Especially,
sub-arctic North Pacific is well known as the highest nutrient
concentrations in deep waters in the global ocean and high
primary productivity regions, because it is the terminal region
for the abyssal circulation. Also known is that this region
is as good fishing grounds and important sink for atmospheric
CO2. As oceanographic features of North Pacific, sub-tropical
gyre and sub-arctic gyre which are surface circulation systems
contact with each other at east side of Japan, and deferent
water mass including sub-tropical, transition and sub-arctic
regions exist between south to north. Western Sub-arctic Gyre
is located at west side of North pacific and Alaskan Gyre
is east side. It is said that variability of these circulations
was closely related to climate change on global scale. Therefore
we suggests that North Pacific has a large relation to climate
change on global scale and is a key region where the influence
on ocean biogeochemical cycles and marine ecosystems is very
large, since North Pacific is very large ocean and has various
oceanographic features. Recently, satellite remote sensing
has been developed rapidly and we can obtain physical parameter
in the ocean including insolation, sea surface temperature,
sea wind, sea surface height and sea ice distribution and
biological parameter related to marine ecosystem such as phytoplankton
concentration and primary productivity and so on. Then now
it is possible to estimate primary productivity, nitrate concentrations
and partial pressure of carbon dioxide using satellite data.
Satellite observation is notable as a useful tool to clarify
the mechanism of global change, since it can observe wide
regions continuously and instantaneously, and capture sea
surface phenomena on various temporal and spatial scales. |
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| To reveal the seasonal and interannual
variations of chlorophyll a (chl-a) and primary
productivity and understand the relationships between
their temporal and spatial variability and physical
and chemical processes in the ocean, we have carried
out time-series analysis using multi-remotely sensed
data (chl-a concentrations, primary productivity,
sea surface temperature, sea wind and nitrate concentrations
etc.) which can measure the multi-environmental factors
simultaneously. Consequently, ocean color imagery clearly
showed seasonal and interannual variability in the spatial
abundance and distribution of chl-a and primary productivity
in the North Pacific. Magnitude of chl-a seasonal
variability at western North Pacific is greater than
that at eastern North Pacific, and spring bloom at western
North Pacific is very clear compared with eastern North
Pacific. In contrast, magnitude of chl-a seasonal
variability at eastern North Pacific is small, and chl-a
concentrations were relatively low (less than 0.5mg
m-3) throughout the year. On the other hand, |
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