Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming:

a downscaling experiment of the IPSL-CM4 model

Vincent Echevin

Katerina Goubanova

Ali Belmadani

Boris Dewitte
Received: 16 August 2010 / Accepted: 21 April 2011
Springer-Verlag 2011
Abstract The impact of climate warming on the seasonal
variability of the Humboldt Current system ocean dynam-
ics is investigated. The IPSL-CM4 large scale ocean cir-
culation resulting from two contrasted climate scenarios,
the so-called Preindustrial and quadrupling CO
2
, are
downscaled using an eddy-resolving regional ocean circu-
lation model. The intense surface heating by the atmo-
sphere in the quadrupling CO
2
scenario leads to a strong
increase of the surface density stratication, a thinner
coastal jet, an enhanced PeruChile undercurrent, and an
intensication of nearshore turbulence. Upwelling rates
respond quasi-linearly to the change in wind stress asso-
ciated with anthropogenic forcing, and show a moderate
decrease in summer off Peru and a strong increase off
Chile. Results from sensitivity experiments show that a
50% wind stress increase does not compensate for the
surface warming resulting from heat ux forcing and that
the associated mesoscale turbulence increase is a robust
feature.
Keywords Regional climate change
PeruChile upwelling system Mesoscale dynamics
Coastal upwelling
1 Introduction
The Humboldt Current system (HCS) is the most produc-
tive Eastern Boundary Upwelling System (hereafter EBUS)
of the world ocean in terms of sheries (Chavez et al.
2008). Driven by quasi-permanent upwelling-favorable
winds which generate an intense upwelling of cold, nutri-
ent-rich deep waters, it holds a thriving ecosystem, from
plankton to abundant small pelagic sh stocks, which is
very sensitive to climate variability at various time scales.
Chavez et al. (2003) showed that the main ecosystem
components (sardines, anchovies and marine birds) off
Peru display signicant variations at a wide range of
temporal scales, from interannual ENSO-related variability
to interdecadal variability in relation to the Pacic Decadal
Oscillation occurring in the North Pacic. Given that cli-
mate change is occurring in many regions of the world as
well as in the Eastern South Pacic (Falvey and Garreaud
2009), the consequences of these changes on the HCS
oceanic conditions remain largely unknown. In particular,
the impact of wind forcing and large scale ocean circula-
tion changes on coastal upwelling remains a central issue.
Along with this main concern, one may also question how
the nearshore mesoscale circulation and associated off-
shore transport of water mass properties are modied in a
warmer climate, and the potential consequences on the
marine ecosystem. These are the background questions that
motivate the present study.
In recent years, the World Climate Research Pro-
grammes (WRCPs) Working Group on Coupled Model-
ling (WGCM, http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/about_ipcc.
php) has made available to the scientic community an
ensemble of coupled model simulations through the Cou-
pled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3),
which aims at representing the evolution of large scale
V. Echevin (&) A. Belmadani
LOCEAN, Paris, France
e-mail: [email protected]
K. Goubanova A. Belmadani B. Dewitte
LEGOS, Toulouse, France
K. Goubanova B. Dewitte
IMARPE, IGP, LEGOS, Lima, Peru
A. Belmadani
IPRC, International Pacic Research Center,
SOEST, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii
1 3
Clim Dyn
DOI 10.1007/s00382-011-1085-2
oceanic and atmospheric conditions in the next decades
under various emission scenarios of atmospheric CO
2
.
These simulations provide an invaluable tool to study
global and regional climate change. However, global
models generally have a rather coarse spatial resolution
(*23 in the atmosphere, *12 in the ocean), which
does not allow an adequate representation of regional
dynamical processes, such as the inuence of the Andes
mountains on the atmospheric circulation, or the role of the
continental shelf and slope on coastal ocean dynamics.
Thus, so-called downscaling methods need to be developed
and used to represent the key features and processes at the
appropriate spatial scales in these regions.
Oceanic downscaling relies particularly on the avail-
ability of momentum and heat ux forcing at the sufcient
spatial and temporal resolution. This is all the more critical
for EBUSs which are sensitive to the nearshore mesoscale
(*O (10 km)) structures of the winds due to predominance
of Ekman dynamics. Atmospheric downscaling is thus a
necessary step in order to properly address such issue.
Several downscaling experiments have been performed
in various EBUSs.
In the California upwelling system, Snyder et al. (2003)
used a regional atmospheric circulation model to study the
changes in surface wind stress and curl in the so-called
preindustrial (hereafter PI) scenario, a reference scenario
with CO
2
concentrations xed to their preindustrial level
(280 ppm), and the doubling (hereafter 2CO
2
) scenario,
with CO
2
concentrations evolving at a rate of 1% per year
from preindustrial level to doubling (560 ppm) before
stabilizing (Meehl et al. 2007a). Their results showed an
increase in upwelling-favorable winds during the upwelling
season, with moderate changes in seasonality.
Off central Chile, Garreaud and Falvey (2009) used the
PRECIS regional model (Jones et al. 2004) to downscale
the HadCM3 outputs (Gordon et al. 2000; Pope et al. 2000)
for the present climate conditions (20C3M), SRES A2
and B2 scenarios (Nakicenovic and Coauthors 2000). They
evidenced a signicant increase in alongshore winds off
central Chile during the summer upwelling season.
Recently, Goubanova et al. (2010) used a statistical
downscaling method to represent high resolution
(*50 km) surface winds in the HCS from the outputs of
the IPSL-CM4 model (Hourdin et al. 2006; Marti and
Coauthors 2010). Two idealized climate scenarios were
downscaled: PI and the quadrupling (hereafter 4CO
2
)
scenario, with CO
2
concentrations evolving at a rate of 1%
per year from preindustrial level to quadrupling
(1,120 ppm) before stabilizing. They showed that on sea-
sonal time scales, the alongshore wind increases by
*1020% off Chile in 4CO
2
with respect to PI, in
agreement with results from Garreaud and Falvey (2009).
Off Peru, alongshore wind decreases by *10% in summer
with hardly any change in winter. Nearshore wind stress
curl also displays changes in its seasonal variations, a
1020% curl increase (resp. decrease) in winter (resp.
Summer) in the 4CO
2
scenario with respect to PI off Peru,
and an increase of up to 50% south of 25S off Chile
(Figure not shown).
Although most IPCC models predict an intensication
of South Eastern Pacic anticyclone in a warmer climate
which translates into an intensication of the coastal jet off
Central Chile (Garreaud and Falvey 2009), the projections
for the coastal range off Peru are more subtle due to the
weaker amplitude and variability in surface atmospheric
circulation over this region (Fig. 1). In particular, accord-
ing to Bakuns hypothesis (Bakun 1990; Bakun and Weeks
2008; Bakun et al. 2010), alongshore winds off Peru (as
well as in the other EBUSs) would increase under warmer
conditions due to an enhanced thermal contrast between
land and sea, which would in turn favour upwelling con-
ditions. On the other hand, a decrease in the strength of the
South Eastern Pacic branch of the trade winds may be
expected due to a weakening of the basin-scale Walker
circulation that is projected from coupled general circula-
tion models (CGCMs) under increased atmospheric CO
2
concentration conditions (Vecchi and Soden 2007). The
lack of long-term and densely sampled data sets, however,
does not allow a condent diagnosis of the wind-stress
trend along the coast of Peru/Chile from observations and
its relationship with warmer conditions. This limits to some
extent our understanding of the processes at work in con-
trolling the upwelling conditions off the west coast of
South America in a warmer climate.
Whereas several studies of the changes in atmospheric
conditions in EBUSs already exist, very few studies of the
EBUSs response of the ocean circulation to climate change
have been performed, and none for the HCS. Auad et al.
(2006) used a regional ocean model forced by downscaled
surface winds, heat uxes and ocean boundary conditions
from a 36% CO
2
increase scenario in the California
upwelling system. They evidenced an upwelling increase
of cool deep waters forced by a wind stress increase, in
agreement with Bakuns predictions (Bakun 1996). This
wind-forced upwelling is strong enough to overcome the
surface stratication increase caused by the greenhouse
surface warming. This led to a moderate oceanic cooling at
the surface, higher vertical velocities during the upwelling
season and lower nearshore eddy activity, with respect to
normal conditions.
Because of the peculiarities of each EBUS (Carr and
Kearns 2003; Chavez and Messie 2009) and the complexity
of ocean dynamics, the conclusions reached by Auad et al.
(2006) cannot be extended to other upwelling systems.
Taking into account complex dynamical processessuch
as the local effects of coastline, bottom topography and
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
non-linear dynamicson the regional circulation is
required to study the response of the upwelling under
warmer climate conditions. Simply put, a better under-
standing of the sensitivity of upwelling dynamics to
anthropogenic forcing is needed in EBUSs, and particularly
in the HCS.
In the present study, the impact of the climate change-
related modication of large scale atmospheric and oceanic
forcing on the regional circulation in the HCS is addressed.
Our study is based on the comparison of the PI and 4CO
2
climate IPSL-CM4 downscaled scenarios. Comparing these
particular scenarios highlights the impact of climate change
in an extreme and idealized framework, which allows to
focus on the key processes at stake. It builds upon the work
by Goubanova et al. (2010) which provides the momentum
forcing at relatively high-resolution for the high-resolution
oceanic model simulations performed in this study. In that
sense the present study can be seen as a companion paper.
As the impact of climate change on interannual ENSO
variability strongly inuencing the HCS has been difcult
to diagnose from ensemble models (van Oldenborgh et al.
2005; Guilyardi 2006; Meehl et al. 2007b; Guilyardi et al.
2009), we chose to focus on changes in the mean state and
seasonal variability. Modications of the cross-shore ther-
mohaline and velocity structure, the upwelling intensity,
and surface eddy kinetic energy, which diagnoses the
intensity of the mesoscale circulation of particular interest
for the transport of small pelagic sh larvae, are investi-
gated in detail.
Two 30-year time periods accounting for the change in
mean state and seasonal cycle under global warming were
selected in the climate scenarios of IPSL-CM4 model of
the IPCC data base, and downscaled using the ROMS
(Regional Ocean Modelling System) model.
The paper is organized as follows: In Sect. 2, the
selected climate scenarios and the downscaling methods
are described. Modelling results from standard experiments
and from sensitivity experiments in which wind stress is
articially modied are presented in Sect. 3. A summary
and discussion are presented in Sect. 4, before some per-
spectives are outlined.
2 Methods
Among the climate models of the IPCC data base, the IPSL-
CM4 model (Marti and Coauthors 2010) was selected. The
motivation for choosing the IPSL-CM4 model was threefold:
(1) the daily atmospheric outputs were available over an
extended period of time, and for many variables which
allowedtodesigna statistical atmospheric downscalingmodel
(see Goubanova et al. (2010) for details); (2) this global model
has been shown to reproduce realistically key aspects of the
large scale circulation (cf. Sect. 3), which includes ENSO
variability (Marti and Coauthors 2010; Belmadani et al. 2010)
and the subtropical anticyclone (Garreaud and Falvey 2009);
(3) the IPSL-CM4 response to global warming mimics the
sensitivity of the IPCC multi-model ensemble mean. The
response of sea level pressure and surface wind to global
warming simulated by the IPSL-CM4 model is similar, in
terms of spatial structure, to those estimated from a multi-
model ensemble (Fig. 1, see also Goubanova et al. (2010)).
Moreover, the response of key large scale oceanic parameters
such as the local thermocline depth, the vertical stratication
and the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) eastward ux into the
PeruChile region (Table 1) in the IPSL simulations range
with those froma selection of the most realistic CGCMs in the
ESP (Belmadani et al. 2010). Selecting a single model among
Fig. 1 a Difference in surface winds (arrows) and sea level pressure
(colour) between experiments A2 (20812100) and 20C3M
(19812000) calculated based on a a multi-model ensemble and
b the IPSL-CM4 model. The wind difference for the multi-model
ensemble is shown for the points where more than 75% of the
CGCMs agree on the sign of the difference. The bold arrows at
(b) indicate the regions where IPSL-CM4 surface wind change is
signicantly different (at the 90% condence level) from the multi-
model average change. The multi-model average was obtained by
interpolating the outputs from 13 coupled GCMs runs performed for
CMIP3 to a uniform 2.5 9 2.5 latlon grid, and subsequently
averaging the long-term mean of each model. The CGCMs used
are BCCR-BCM2.0, CGCM3.1(T47), CNRM-CM3,CSIRO-MK3.0,
CSIRO-MK3.5, GFDL-CM2.0,GFDL-CM2.1,INGV-ECHAM4,INM-
CM3.0, IPSL-CM4, MPIM-ECHAM5, MRI- CGCM2.3.2,GISS-ER
(the data are available at http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/)
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
the entire IPCC model ensemble does offer a somewhat
limited viewpoint on regional climate change. However, due
to the computational cost of dynamical downscaling and since
the paper focuses on the processes at work under global
warming, this limitation is not detrimental for the purpose of
the paper.
Two 30-year time periods were selected from the PI and
4CO
2
scenarios, respectively: the 19701999 period from
the PI scenario, and the 21202149 period from the 4CO
2
scenario. Note that the calendar of the model years has no
particular meaning since (1) they refer to idealized exper-
iments without a realistic CO
2
forcing and (2) CGCMs are
known to diverge from reality after a few years if not
started with observed oceanatmosphere initial conditions.
The IPSL-CM4 coupled model has a resolution of 3.75
(longitude) 9 2.54 (latitude) in the atmosphere and 2
(longitude) 9 1 (latitude) in the ocean. As briey outlined
in the introduction, a statistical downscaling method was
applied in order to produce surface wind elds at a suf-
ciently high spatial resolution to adequately force the
regional ocean model (see following paragraph). The IPSL-
CM4 surface wind elds display unrealistic patterns near
the coastline of the very coarse atmospheric model (see
Goubanova et al. (2010)). In a nearshore band of O
(*100 km), which scales with the size of the atmospheric
model grid, divergence of the Ekman transport at the coast
and wind stress curl are the main forcing of upwelling, thus
wind stress spatio-temporal variability needs to be ade-
quately represented near the coast. For this purpose, a
statistical method, which takes advantage of the relatively
high-resolution QuikSCAT satellite wind products over the
20002008 period, was used to derive regional daily wind
stress elds with 0.5 9 0.5 spatial resolution from the
IPSL-CM4 large-scale outputs. Details on the method and
its validation are described in Goubanova et al. (2010).
A dynamical downscaling method is used to represent
the regional ocean circulation. The eddy-resolving ROMS
regional ocean circulation model (Shchepetkin and
McWilliams 2005) is used at a resolution of 1/6 in lon-
gitude times 1/6cos(/) in latitude (*18 km) in a spatial
domain covering 100W70W, 15N40S. This model
conguration has open boundaries on its northern, western
and southern sides. ROMS solves the hydrostatic primitive
equations with a free surface explicit-scheme, and sigma
coordinates on 31 vertical levels. Bottom topography from
ETOPO2 (Smith and Sandwell 1997) has been interpolated
on the model grid, smoothed to reduce pressure gradient
errors and modied at the open boundaries to match bottom
topography from the ORCA2 model (Madec et al. 1998)
the ocean component of the IPSL-CM4 model. This model
conguration is quite similar to that used in Colas et al.
(2008), with a lower spatial resolution in our case.
ROMS is forced at the oceanatmosphere interface by
the downscaled wind stress. Heat and fresh water uxes are
taken directly from the IPSL-CM4 outputs. The heat ux
includes a restoring term to a prescribed surface tempera-
ture eld. As these elds have a coarse resolution and
present strong biases, a correction is applied for each eld.
It consists of replacing the mean seasonal cycle of the
simulated eld by the observed one which has a higher
spatial resolution. We proceeded as follows, in a similar
way for the PI and 4CO
2
model elds. We rst calculated
anomalies of, say, PI solar heat ux Q
PI
, with respect to the
seasonal cycle calculated from the 19602000 subperiod of
the IPSL-CM4 20C3M simulation (the so-called climate
of the 20th century control run). This allowed to remove
part of the large scale biases present in both the PI and the
20C3M simulations of the IPSL-CM4 model (in particular
the inaccurate representation of mean condition in the
coastal zone). Last, we added to the anomalies the 1 9 1
COADS climatology for solar heat ux (Da Silva et al.
1994). This procedure is summarized in Eq. 1 for ux Q,
Q
0
PI
Q
PI
Q
clim
20C3M
Q
clim
coads
1
It is applied to each variable playing a role in the heat
ux formulation: SST, net heat ux, freshwater ux,
Table 1 Large scale oceanic parameters in the Eastern South Pacic from 8 selected coupled OGCMs under the so-called preindustrial climate
(PI) and quadrupling CO
2
scenario (4CO
2
)
OGCM BCCR CCMA CNRM GFDL INGV IPSL UKMO3 UKMO1
Scenarios PI/4CO
2
PI/4CO
2
PI/4CO
2
PI/4CO
2
PI/4CO
2
PI/4CO
2
PI/4CO
2
PI/4CO
2
T (years) 250 100 10
3
30 150 30 150 30 100 60 150 40 150 20 80 80
Z
0
(meters) 30 30 25 25 30 75 25 25 30 30 35 35 25 25 25 45
dT/dz (10
-1
C/m) 2.1 2.3 1.4 1.5 1.0 1.2 2.4 2.6 1.4 1.7 2.7 3.0 2.0 2.1 2.3 2.8
EUC transport (Sv) at 100W 17.9 16.9 8.6 8.1 19.4 19.4 16.6 16.4 15.0 16.1 17.2 16.9 17.6 18.4 24.7 25.7
T the length of the time period (in years) from which the parameters were calculated. Z
0
(in meters) indicates thermocline depth, dT/dz the
maximum vertical gradient of temperature (in 10
-1
C/m). The OGCMs are BCCR-BCM2.0,CCMA-CGCM3.1(T47), CNRM-CM3,GFDL-
CM2.0,INGV-ECHAM4,IPSL-CM4,UKMO-HadCM3,UKMO-HadGEM1
Bold values correspond to IPSL model
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
surface atmospheric parameters (air temperature, relative
humidity) involved in the restoring term dQ/dSST which
takes part in the net heat ux formulation (Barnier et al.
1995). It was checked from control experiments that this
corrections leads to a more realistic mean SST than when
using the direct heat ux outputs because of large errors
associated with the misrepresentation of seasonal solar ux
by the IPSL-CM4 model near the coast in particular (see
Table 2).
Open boundary conditions and initial state values for
temperature, salinity, velocity and sea surface height were
used to constrain the regional model. Monthly mean out-
puts of the IPSL-CM4 model were used and linearly
interpolated onto the ROMS 1/6 grid using the ROM-
STOOLS software (Penven et al. 2008).
The model is run for 33 years for each PI and 4CO
2
period. The rst 3 years of model spin-up are forced by
perpetual forcing corresponding to the climatology of the
two chosen 10-year periods for the PI and 4CO
2
scenarios.
Then the model is forced by interannual forcing over the
two 30-year periods, which are analyzed and compared.
3 Results
3.1 Surface circulation
To illustrate the impact of the dynamical downscaling, the
IPSL-CM4 model surface temperature and velocity corre-
sponding to the PI scenario is shown in Fig. 2a and the
ROMS solution forced by the IPSL PI solution is shown in
Fig. 2b.
Large scale SST biases are noticeable in IPSL-CM4.
Coastal upwelling does not occur off Peru and the cold SST
pattern off Chile is located *200300 km offshore instead
of nearshore. The ROMS surface temperature is much
more realistic (Fig. 2b). For instance, the regional model is
able to represent the cold alongshore SST pattern off Peru.
Off Chile, coastal upwelling occurs south of 25S, in
agreement with observed features (Strub et al. 1998). Note
that the ROMS temperature averaged over the basin eld is
23C cooler than in IPSL-CM4. This is due to the cor-
rected eld SST (see Eq. 1 in Sect. 2) used to restore the
models SST in the heat ux formulation. SST is cooler
than the IPSL-CM4 SST as the COADS SST eld is 23C
cooler than the IPSL-CM4 20th century climatological SST
(not shown). This cooling is also partly due to the enhanced
coastal upwelling and offshore advection of cool waters in
the ROMS simulations.
The surface circulation is also much more realistic in the
ROMS solution. Indeed, an unrealistic poleward surface
ow takes place off Peru in the IPSL-CM4 solution
(Fig. 2a), whereas the Peru Coastal Current (hereafter
PCC) equatorward jet associated with coastal upwelling is
present in the ROMS solution (Fig. 2b), in agreement with
observed features (Strub et al. 1998). Short scale patterns
of 50100 km such as mesoscale eddies, laments and jets
are also present in ROMS, with a velocity scale compa-
rable to other regional model solutions (e.g. Penven et al.
2005; Colas et al. 2008; Albert et al. 2010).
3.2 Change in vertical structure:
Cross-shore sections near 10S of ROMS PI and 4CO
2
mean temperature, salinity and alongshore velocity are
presented in Figs. 3 and 4 respectively. These sections
illustrate the change in ocean dynamics along the Peruvian
coast between 8S and 13S. Figure 3 shows that the tem-
perature in the surface layers increased dramatically under
anthropogenic forcing. The 16C isotherm depth in PI is
around 70 m 300 km offshore and rises up to 20 m at the
coast (Fig. 3a). In 4CO
2
, it is near 200 m depth off shore
and deepens towards the coast (Fig. 3b). The nearshore
upward tilt of isotherms shows that coastal upwelling takes
place in both simulations (Fig. 3). Below *80 m in PI and
4CO
2
, isotherms tilt downward, denoting the presence of
the poleward PeruChile Under Current (hereafter PCUC).
The temperature increase is associated with an increase
in average vertical thermal stratication in the 0250 m
deep water column, from *4.5 9 10
-2
C/m in PI to
*5.5 9 10
-2
C/m in 4CO
2
. To further illustrate the
changes in thermocline structure, the depth and intensity of
the thermocline were estimated offshore of the coastal
upwelling from an alongshore-averaged temperature pro-
le. This prole was computed 300 km from the coast and
averaged between 8S and 13S. The depth of the
Table 2 SST bias and SST root mean square (RMS) for two ROMS simulations performed with a bias correction using an observed climatology
(i.e. Q Q
clim
coads
Q
2L24
Q
clim
20C3M

) and without bias correction (i.e. Q = Q
2L24
)
Area 5N20S (Peru) 20S35S (Chile)
Heat ux parameterization No correction With correction No correction With correction
SST bias (in C) 1.4 -1 -0.7 -1
SST RMS (in C) 2.3 2 2 2.1
The SST bias and RMS are calculated with respect to the SST Pathnder climatology (Reynolds and Smith 1994)
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
thermocline (z
0
) is diagnosed as the depth of the maximum
vertical temperature gradient (dT/dz for z = z
0
). Obtained
values are listed in Table 3. Thermocline depth remains
around 50 m in the PI and 4CO
2
experiments. In contrast,
the intensity of the thermocline (dT/dz for z = z
0)
increa-
ses by 40% in 4CO
2
, from 0.10C/m in PI to 0.14C/m in
4CO
2
. We expect this strong stratication increase offshore
of the upwelling area to impact the upwelling system by
reducing the efciency of Ekman dynamics.
Strong salinity changes also take place in this area. The
PI salinity decreases with depth in the top 250 m, as in
Levitus climatological data (not shown), with offshore
values around 35.15 psu at 100 m depth and 35.07 psu
near 200 m (Fig. 3a). Near the coast, salinity is quite
homogeneous and around 35.25 psu, and corresponds to
the relatively salty tropical waters advected eastward by the
equatorial undercurrent and poleward by the PCUC (not
shown). In contrast, fresher waters are present in the whole
Eastern South Pacic from 10N to 30S in the IPSL-CM4
4CO
2
global simulation (not shown). The average depth of
the 34.6 psu isohaline over the Eastern South Pacic
(15N40S,100W70W) rises from 800 to 1,000 m in
the IPSL PI simulation to 200400 m in the IPSL 4CO
2
simulation(not shown). Thus, waters with salinities as low
Fig. 2 SST (color scale in C)
and horizontal surface velocity
(arrows in m/s) in a IPSL-CM4
PI and b ROMS PI in January.
Note the change of color scale
for SST in (a) and velocity scale
in (b)
Fig. 3 Mean temperature (black contours and shading in C) and salinity (blue contours, in PSU) along a cross-shore section at 10S for a PI
and b 4CO
2
. Contour interval for temperature (resp. salinity) is 1C (resp. 0.05 PSU)
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
as 35.05 psu are upwelled near the shore in the ROMS
4CO
2
simulation (Fig. 3b), whereas they are *0.20 psu
saltier in PI (Fig. 3a). Such modications of intermediate
water characteristics also suggest that strong changes in the
nutrient concentration of upwelling source waters may
occur.
These hydrological changes are associated with changes
in the vertical density structure (Fig. 4). Both temperature
and salinity modications decrease density and increase
stratication in the 0200 m surface layer, the effect of
temperature increase being largely dominant. This increase
in stratication impacts the alongshore current system. The
surface cross-shore density gradient sustains a pressure
gradient which forces a thinner PCC in 4CO
2
(*40 m)
than in PI (*70 m). The PCUC structure and intensity is
also modied. It shoals by *1020 m and the undercur-
rents core intensies by *2 cm s
-1
in 4CO
2
, which rep-
resents a *40% increase.
3.3 Impact on mesoscale circulation
The changes in alongshore currents induces a stronger
vertical shear 100200 km from the coast in the 4CO
2
experiment relative to PI, which impacts baroclinic insta-
bility processes (Pedlosky 1987). This is conrmed by the
estimation of available potential energy (PE) to eddy
kinetic energy (EKE) ux (see Marchesiello et al. 2003 for
the detailed mathematical formulation) in the top 100 m in
this region (Fig. 5), which is the signature of baroclinic
instability. Values are particularly enhanced in fall and
winter near the coast, thus showing the important role of
the sheared current system (Fig. 4b). Note that mean
kinetic energy to EKE ux (characterizing barotropic
instability) was also computed but remains almost an order
of magnitude smaller than the PE to EKE ux.
In order to illustrate the impact of warming on the
mesoscale variability, Fig. 6 displays the mean eddy
kinetic energy (hereafter EKE) in the two simulations (see
also Table 1 for a quantitative comparison). The map of
observed satellite-derived EKE is also presented as a ref-
erence. Geostrophic surface velocity anomalies computed
from sea level spatial variations are used to derive EKE.
EKE for PI displays relatively lower values than the
observations, especially off Peru, which is partly related to
a lack of intraseasonal variability in the oceanic boundary
conditions since monthly average outputs of the IPSL-CM4
model are used. Off Chile, PI EKE amplitude is in rela-
tively good agreement with satellite observations. EKE is
underestimated in the 18S25S latitude band and south of
35S owing to the proximity of the southern open boundary
which dampens current instabilities. Notable modications
in EKE patterns are the strong nearshore increase off
Fig. 4 Density (blue contours in kg m
-3
) and alongshore velocity
(black contours and color shading in cm s
-1
) on a cross-shore section
at 10S for a PI and b 4CO
2
. Contour interval is 0.25 kg m
-3
for
density, 1 cm s
-1
for poleward velocity (dashed), 2 cm s
-1
(resp.
5 cm s
-1
) for equatorward velocity in the [0,20] cm s
-1
range (resp.
[20,30] cm s
-1
range). Density of pure water (1,000 kg m
-3
) was
substracted from density values
Table 3 Thermocline depth (dened as the depth of maximum ver-
tical gradient of thermocline) and vertical temperature gradient at
thermocline depth for an alongshore average, annual mean tempera-
ture prole, 300 km from the coast, averaged between 8S and 13S
off Peru
Simulation name
and time period
Thermocline
depth (in m)
Temperature
gradient
intensity (in
10
-1
C/m)
PI (19701999) 50 1.0
2CO
2
(20702079) 50 1.1
4CO
2
(21202149) 50 1.4
4CO
2
a (21202129, PI wind) 50 1.6
4CO
2
b (2120-2129, 4CO
2
wind ?50%) 50 1.05
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
Northern Peru (*30%) and Central Chile (*38%) in
4CO
2
with respect to PI (Table 1).
The thickening and intensication of the PCUC, par-
ticularly in April-June and AugustOctober (Fig. 7a), plays
a major role in this EKE increase by modifying the vertical
shear, especially as the equatorward surface PCC mean and
seasonal transport varies little (Fig. 7b). The PCUC mean
transport increases from 1.9 Sv in the PI experiment to
2.3 Sv in the 4CO
2
experiment (A *20% increase),
whereas the EUC transport at 100W is almost unchanged
in the PI (12.7 Sv) and in the 4CO
2
(12.8 Sv) experiments.
In contrast, the seasonal cycle of the PCUC varies in phase
with that of the EUC in both the PI and 4CO
2
experiments
(Fig. 7c), likely due to the propagation of equatorial Kelvin
waves (Cravatte et al. 2003) and coastal-trapped waves.
These results suggest that the eddy kinetic energy change
may be explained by changes in two mains dynamical
forcings: an increase of the mean PCUC due to the strati-
cation increase in 4CO
2
, and a modication of the equa-
torially-forced intraseasonal variability in 4CO
2
. The
different timing (and possibly intensication) of the coastal
waves relatively to the seasonal cycle of the upwelling may
impact nearshore EKE (Echevin et al. 2011).
EUC variability, as well as part of the PCUC variability,
is controlled by equatorially-forced intraseasonal Kelvin
waves propagation which force poleward-propagating
coastal trapped waves, and may thus impact nearshore eddy
kinetic energy (Echevin et al. 2011).
3.4 Change in upwelling rate
We now investigate how atmospheric momentum and heat
forcing modications translate into upwelling changes. In
particular, an increase (decrease) in along-shore winds may
not result in a proportional increase (decrease) in upwelling
because of potential cross-shore compensating geostrophic
adjustment (Marchesiello and Estrade 2010), mixing and
restratication processes. Here we test the sensitivity of the
vertical ux of mass to the PI and 4CO
2
atmospheric
forcing. The vertical ux of mass is estimated from the
maximum vertical velocity between 20 and 50 m depth at
the rst grid point near the coast (which corresponds to an
Fig. 5 Time-depth evolution of
potential energy (PE) to eddy
kinetic energy (EKE) ux (in
10
-4
cm
2
s
-3
) for a PI and
b 4CO
2
. PE to EKE ux is
calculated for each season and
averaged over the domain
(84W78W,6S10S] off
Northern Peru. Contours every
0.25 9 10
-4
cm
2
s
-3
Fig. 6 Mean eddy kinetic energy (EKE, in cm
2
s
-2
) computed from sea level for a AVISO observations over 19922004, b PI (19701999) and
c 4CO
2
(20202049). Sea level drift has been substracted from 4CO
2
simulation
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
18-km wide coastal band). Its seasonal variations are
shown in Fig. 8a as a function of latitude. Four main
regimes depending on latitude can be identied: the central
Peru upwelling regime with maximum upwelling in austral
winter between 5S and 16S (Chavez 1995), a southern
Peru-northern Chile transitional regime with weaker
upwelling throughout the year between 16S and 26S, and
two central Chile regimes with maximum upwelling in
austral spring (26S32S), and summer (32S37S)
(Strub et al. 1998), driven by the seasonal northward
migration of the central Chile Coastal Jet (Garreaud and
Munoz 2005). Note that all these regimes are upwelling-
favorable throughout the year, except near 35S40S in
late fall-early winter. Qualitatively similar regimes are
present in the 4CO
2
simulation (not shown).
In order to differentiate the changes in upwelling asso-
ciated with change in wind-stress characteristics and those
associated with change in stratication and mixing pro-
cesses, relative changes in the seasonal variations of
Ekman transport and of vertical velocity are presented in
Figs. 8b and c. The results indicate that, off central Peru
[5S18S], a summer *1020% reduction in alongshore
upwelling-favorable wind stress (Fig. 8b) from PI to 4CO
2
leads to a *2030% decrease in Ekman vertical velocity
(Fig. 8c). The more intense winter upwelling increases
moderately (*10%) in 4CO
2
, proportionally to the
*510% wind stress increase. Off northern Chile [20S
28S], the weak upwelling rate (less than 2 m day
-1
,
Fig. 8a) responds quasi-linearly to the wind stress increase,
except at some specic latitudes where the local increase is
higher (e.g. the *50100% increase near 25S, Fig. 8c).
Further south [26S40S], the intense summer upwelling
shows a strong increase of up to 2030% in 4CO
2
, pro-
portional to the increase in wind stress forcing.
Fig. 7 Transport seasonal variations (in Sv) for a PCUC, b PCC and
c EUC at 100 for PI (black line) and 4CO
2
(red line). PCUC (PCC)
transport was computed by summing poleward (equatorward) ow
through an averaged cross-shore section between 6S and 12S, and
0350 m (0200 m) depth. EUC transport was computed by summing
eastward ow through through a 4N4S meridional section at
100W, between 0 and 200 m depth
Fig. 8 Time-latitude variations of a PI coastal upwelling (in
m day
-1
), relative change (in %) between 4CO
2
and PI in b Ekman
transport, and in c coastal upwelling, relative to PI. Coastal upwelling
is derived from maximum model vertical velocity at the coast
between 20 and 50 m depth, and Ekman transport from alongshore
wind stress. Model vertical velocities have been smoothed alongshore
with a running mean over 11 grid points to lter noisy patterns.
Values have been masked when the PI alongshore wind stress (resp.
vertical velocity) is less than 5 9 10
-2
N m
-2
(resp. 5 cm day
-1
)
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
3.5 Sensitivity experiments using 2CO
2
scenario
and modied alongshore wind stress off Peru
One may argue that the climate scenario investigated here
is rather extreme and that conclusions may be different
under less drastic warming conditions. To investigate this
aspect, an ad hoc numerical experiment was conducted
using ocean conditions and downscaled wind stress from
the IPSL-CM4 2CO
2
scenario. In this simulation, 2CO
2
wind increase is more moderate off Chile and almost
unchanged off Peru compared to that in 4CO
2
(see Fig. 8a
in Goubanova et al. (2010)). However, due to changes in
large scale and local thermal stratication, the thermocline
intensity increases slightly (10%, Table 3), and the EKE
increase with respect to PI is important (?17%, ?5%,
?35% for Northern Peru, Northern Chile, Central Chile,
respectively, see Table 4).
The moderate summer upwelling decrease off Peru in
our ROMS simulations (Fig. 8c) illustrates the sensitivity
of the dynamical response to the 10% decrease in
upwelling-favorable wind forcing as diagnosed by Gou-
banova et al. (2010). The latter study contrasts with Bak-
uns (1990) hypothesis suggesting greenhouse-associated
intensication of thermal low-pressure cells over the
coastal landmasses and therefore increase in upwelling
favourable winds in a warmer climate (Bakun et al. 2010).
In order to investigate the sensitivity of the upwelling
dynamics to a potential increase in wind stress forcing, two
simulations (referred to as 4CO
2
a and 4CO
2
b) were per-
formed using a modied wind stress. In 4CO
2
a, the wind
stress is replaced by the PI seasonal wind stress eld,
therefore assuming no change in alongshore wind stress
under 4CO
2
warmer conditions. In 4CO
2
b, the 4CO
2
wind
stress is increased by 50% in a 1,000 km-width band along
the PeruChile coast. It varies smoothly to reach standard
4CO
2
values 1,000 km away from the coast. In this
experiment, the stronger alongshore wind stress (with
respect to the standard 4CO
2
experiment) is expected to
upwell deeper colder waters and to enhance vertical mix-
ing, which could limit surface stratication, modify both
the current system and the mesoscale circulation. Note that
in the 4CO
2
a and 4CO
2
b sensitivity experiments, net heat
uxes (including the SST used for restoring) were kept
identical to those of the standard 4CO
2
experiment.
Thermocline intensity increases by *14% in 4CO
2
a
with respect to 4CO
2
(Table 3), likely because of the
slightly (10%) weaker winter wind stress off Peru in 4CO
2
a than in 4CO
2
(Fig. 8b). In experiment 4CO
2
b, thermo-
cline intensity (*1.05 9 10
-1
C/m) matches that of the PI
simulation (*1.0 9 10
-1
C/m). It is much lower than that
of the 4CO
2
simulation (*1.4 9 10
-1
C/m), which is
likely due to the intensied wind-induced vertical mixing
in 4CO
2
b. Thus, in the case of a strong (?50%) wind stress
increase, vertical mixing may compensate the impact of
greenhouse-induced surface heating on thermocline inten-
sity. Note that the depth of the thermocline (*50 m) is not
modied in these experiments (Table 3).
Alongshore-averaged (between 6S and 13S) density
and alongshore velocity changes are compared in Fig. 9.
Density structure changes little in 4CO
2
a (less than
-0.05 kg m
-3
) over the top 100 m (Fig. 9a) in comparison
to the standard 4CO
2
experiment. In 4CO
2
b, density dif-
ference reaches ?0.1 kg m
-3
at *4080 m depth, indi-
cating upwelling of denser water on the shelf than in 4CO
2
,
and *0.3 kg m
-3
near the surface, indicating mixing and
surface cooling. The surface coastal current decreases by
*2 cm/s in 4CO
2
a (Fig. 9b), and increases by up to 8 cm/s
in 4CO
2
b. The PCUC is also modied (Fig. 9c): its core
velocity near 60 m (resp. *120140 m) reaches *8 cm/s
(resp. *9 cm/s) in 4CO
2
a (resp. 4CO
2
b) instead of
*67 cm/s at *120 m in 4CO
2
. All three 4CO
2
simula-
tions generate an EKE increase with respect to PI off
Northern Peru (*?19% and *?63% for 4CO
2
a and
4CO
2
b, respectively, see Table 4) as in the 4CO
2
experi-
ment (*?30%).
Figure 10 illustrates the sensitivity of vertical velocity
off the Peruvian shelf [6S14S] to the different along-
shore wind stresses. The 4CO
2
a upward ux is increased
with respect to 4CO
2
during summer and fall, and remains
very similar to the PI ux until July. It then decreases
between July and December and becomes comparable with
that in the 4CO
2
experiment in spite of the stronger wind
forcing in 4CO
2
a than in 4CO
2
. This suggests that the large
scale ocean conditions or the wind forcing could play a
dominant role depending on the season in the 4CO
2
sce-
nario. In contrast, when the wind stress is strongly
enhanced (by 50% in 4CO
2
b with respect to 4CO
2
), the
wind-driven upwelling clearly dominates and the vertical
ux increases linearly by * 50%.
4 Discussion and conclusions
The regional ocean circulation in the HCS was studied
using a regional circulation model forced by two idealized
climate scenarios, the preindustrial and the CO
2
quadru-
pling scenario from the IPSL-CM4 global climate model.
The most striking results of these experiments are (1) a
strong heating of more than 4C in the upper ocean off
Peru, from the surface to 300 m depth, (2) an increase in
surface density stratication and thermocline intensity,
inducing (3) a thinner surface Peru Coastal Current, (4) an
intensied poleward undercurrent, (5) an enhanced meso-
scale turbulence driven by the enhanced vertical shear of
the coastal current system, (6) a summer decrease and
moderate winter increase in coastal upwelling off Peru, and
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
(7) a strong spring-summer increase in upwelling off
Central Chile.
Sensitivity experiments on the wind stress forcing sug-
gest that, in the conditions of the 4CO
2
IPSL-CM4
warming scenario, an increase of up to 50% in upwelling-
favorable wind stress does compensate for thermocline
intensity because of the enhanced mixing, but does not
compensate for the impact of the surface warming on the
intensity of the mesoscale circulation. It also shows that the
coastal upwelling response to moderate wind stress
variations from contrasted wind scenarios is nonlinear and
may depend on the season.
Note that surface cooling by increased latent heat ux
was not taken into account in these sensitivity experiments.
Net heat ux into the ocean, which includes implicitly
cooling due to the latent heat ux, is prescribed by 4CO
2
conditions. Taking into account the extra latent heat cool-
ing related to the increase in wind stress in 4CO
2
a and
4CO
2
b could somewhat decrease surface stratication.
Further investigation of this process requires taking into
Fig. 9 Mean alongshore-averaged a density (in kg m
-3)
and b along-
shore velocity (in cm s
-1
, positive is equatorward) anomalies with
respect to PI, in the equatorward current, 40 km from the coast.
c Mean alongshore-averaged total alongshore velocity (in cm s
-1,
negative is poleward) in the coastal undercurrents core, 80 km from
the coast, for 4CO
2
(full black line), 4CO
2
a (dashed red line), 4CO
2
b
(full red line). Alongshore averaged is performed between 6S and
12S
Table 4 EKE average values
(in cm
2
s
-2
) in 3 nearshore
areas: North Peru (85W76W;
6S12S); South Peru (80W
72W; 12S18S); Central
Chile (80W70W; 25S
35S)
EKE was also calculated for 3
distinct decades to illustrate
interdecadal variability and
demonstrate the robustness of
the EKE increase with warming.
Percentage are calculated with
respect to the PI 19701999
values
Simulation name and time period EKE
(Northern Peru)
EKE
(Southern Peru)
EKE
(Central Chile)
PI (19701999) 114.2 97.3 97.8
PI (19701979) 92.5 90.9 84.4
PI (19801989) 122.3 96.0 91.0
PI (19901999) 108.5 88.0 97.4
4CO
2
(21202149) 148.9 (?30%) 100.2 (?3%) 135.5 (?38%)
4CO
2
(21202129) 141.1 98.8 120.0
4CO
2
(21302139) 145.9 93.6 104.7
4CO
2
(21402149) 139.5 91.6 155.1
2CO
2
(20702079) 133.3 (?17%) 102.0 (?5%) 132.4 (?35%)
2CO
2
(20502059) 125.4 88.2 125.5
2CO
2
(20602069) 125.0 101.7 130.1
2CO
2
(20702079) 131.3 100.3 113.3
4CO
2
a (21202129, PI wind) 135.8 (?19%) 108.6 (?12%) 117.9 (?20%)
4CO
2
b (21202129, 4CO
2
wind ?50%) 185.7 (?63%) 126.8 (?30%) 197.0 (?101%)
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
account the feedbacks associated with latent heat ux and
explicitly model it using bulk formulas. This will be done
in future work.
The depth of the thermocline, diagnosed in our simu-
lations by the depth of the maximum vertical thermal
gradient 300 km offshore of the Peru shore, is remarkably
stable (*50 m) in all simulations, even in the case of a
strong wind increase (experiment 4CO
2
b). This suggests
that the nutricline depth, which should range with the
thermocline depth, might change relatively little under
climate warming. Consequently, a parameter more crucial
for biological productivity than change in thermocline
depth could be the change in nutrient content for the water
masses upwelled at the coast. These waters, transported by
the Peru undercurrent (Albert et al. 2010) were shown to
originate from the equatorial area (Montes et al. 2010).
However, investigating the modication of subsurface
water mass characteristics in the Equatorial Pacic induced
by global warming is another eld of research clearly
beyond the scope of the present work. However, it is
worthy to note that the model vertical discretization is
restricted by the number of sigma levels (31 on our case).
This limitation might somewhat hamper an accurate rep-
resentation of the thermocline position. Sensitivity tests to
this parameterization will be done in a future study.
This study, as that of Goubanova et al. (2010) also
conrms that the Peru and Chile upwelling systems behave
differently with regards to their sensitivity to climate
change. The increase in upwelling rates off Chile (25S
40S; Fig. 8b) is related to an intensication of the
alongshore surface pressure gradient due to an increase in
atmospheric surface pressure south of the SEP anticyclone
(Garreaud and Falvey 2009). Off Peru the dynamical pro-
cesses are less clear. Part of the summer upwelling-favor-
able wind decrease might be related to the decrease in
Walker circulation (Vecchi and Soden 2007; Vecchi et al.
2006). This decrease is partly compensated by the winter
equatorward migration of the SEP anticyclone, which has a
greater inuence on Peru coastal winds during this season.
The simulated changes in upwelling rate obtained in this
study, whereas they are consistent with observations of the
past 50 years for the Chilean region (Falvey and Garreaud
2009), contrast with results from a recent study based on in
situ measurements of SST, wind reanalyses, and Alkenone-
based SST reconstruction off Pisco (14S) (Gutierrez et al.
2011). The authors show a 50-year trend of decreasing
SST, which suggests a long-term upwelling-favorable trend
despite the strong interannual and interdecadal variability
in the wind forcing. Nevertheless, it is difcult to compare
this study with ours since our work does not focus on
modern time periods and is based on idealized climate
scenarios which do not represent the observed decadal
variability. A promising approach would be to perform
regional simulations forced by NCEP/NCAR (Kalnay et al.
1996) and ERA40 (Uppala et al. 2005) reanalysis over the
last 50 years. This work is under way.
Despite the differences in experimental set up, it is
interesting to compare our results with similar experiments
performed for the California EBUS. Auad et al. (2006)
found that mixing due to an anthropogenically-forced
increase in upwelling-favorable winds overcomes strati-
cation caused by surface heating. This led to a greater
upwelling rate and a decrease in EKE. This contrasts with
the results presented here, even for the Chilean region
where upwelling increases in warmer conditions. This
might be due to the moderate heating taking place in their
case, which consisted in a 36% CO
2
increase from present
day concentrations, versus 200400% CO
2
increase from
preindustrial concentrations in our case. On the other hand,
it must be noted that Di Lorenzo et al. (2005)s study found
an EKE increase over 19492000 using a similar model
conguration than Auad et al. (2006). Decadal variability
in EKE could partially hinder the anthropogenically-forced
climate signals, and more model studies contrasting hind-
casts simulations and downscaling of climate scenarios are
needed to conrm these tendencies.
Despite limitations owed to model biases and experi-
mental set-up (in particular the fact that regional air-sea
feedback are not taken into account), the model experi-
ments performed in this work offer the opportunity to
document the sensitivity of the ecosystem to change in
simulated environment conditions. Underway coupling of
our dynamical model with biogeochemical (Echevin et al.
2008) and biological models (Brochier et al. 2008; Her-
nandez et al. 2010) will allow to further investigate the
impact of regional climate change on the planktonic bio-
mass, the oxygen minimum zone, and higher trophic levels.
Acknowledgments Numerical simulations were performed on the
IDRIS NEC-SX8 calculator. V. Echevin and B. Dewitte are funded by
Fig. 10 Seasonal variations of vertical velocity (in m/day) for the
Peru region, averaged between 6S and 14S, for PI (black line),
4CO
2
(red line), 4CO
2
a (red dashed line 4CO
2
oceanic conditions
with PI wind stress) and 4CO
2
b (blue dashed line 4CO
2
oceanic
conditions with 4CO
2
wind stress increase by 50% in coastal band,
see text)
V. Echevin et al.: Sensitivity of the Humboldt Current system to global warming
1 3
the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD). K. Gouba-
nova was supported by the AXA foundation. A. Belmadani was co-
funded by the IRD Departement de Soutien et Formation (DSF),
Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS). All authors received support
from the PCCC and PEPS-VMCS2008 ANR projects during the
development of this work. F. Colas is acknowledged for providing the
matlab routines used to calculate the barotropic and baroclinic
instability energy conversion terms.
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