The Gulf of Maine will again experience colder than normal bottom-water temperatures, according to a new forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA projects deep water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine will be cooler by 0.9 to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, compared to the seasonal average. The outlook is based on new models developed by NOAA researchers that provide large-scale predictions of the ocean and regional ecosystem changes.
The forecast appears to continue a trend that Maine scientists observed for the last year and a half.
Nick Record, a senior scientist with the Bigelow Laboratory, said recent measurements taken through the lab's Gulf of Maine North Atlantic Time Series survey are consistent with NOAA's outlook.
Data show deep-water temperatures that are 1 degree Celsius colder than measurements taken last year, Record said.
NOAA scientists attribute the trend to the southward movement of a portion of the Gulf Stream, and potentially an influx of subarctic water into the system. Historically, the Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest warming oceans on the planet.
"The cooling trend from the Labrador Shelf region is significant and could have important effects on local marine ecosystems and fisheries," Vincent Saba, a research fishery biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said in a release.
Agency research also suggests there may be more frequent inflows of cooler deep water, which could moderate warming in the Gulf of Maine over the next few years, but scientists caution that needs more study.
Colder deep waters may create more favorable conditions for lobster and groundfish. And Record said the conditions are consistent with the kind of oceanography that provides food for North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of Maine in late summer and fall.
Right whales, for example, returned to the eastern Gulf of Maine in higher numbers last year than they had in the past decade. Though the conditions this year appear to be similar to last year's, Record stresses it's not a guarantee that right whales will return to those historically important feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine later this summer. The whereabouts of the critically endangered species have been notoriously difficult to predict, and conditions in the Gulf of Maine could change.
