Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
2024
Department
Oceanography
Abstract
Decades of research have relied on satellite-based estimates of chlorophyll-a concentration to identify oceanographic processes and plan in situ observational campaigns; however, the patterns of intrinsic temporal variation in chlorophyll-a concentration have not been investigated on a global scale. Here we develop a metric to quantify time series complexity (i.e., a measure of the ups and downs of sequential observations) in chlorophyll-a concentration and show that seemingly disparate regions (e.g., Atlantic vs Indian, equatorial vs subtropical) in the global ocean can be inherently similar. These patterns can be linked to the regularity of chlorophyll-a concentration change and the likelihood of anomalous events within the satellite record. Despite distinct spatial changes in decadal chlorophyll-a concentration, changes in time series complexity have been relatively consistent. This work provides different metrics for monitoring the global ocean and suggests that the complexity of chlorophyll-a time series can be independent of its magnitude.
Publication Title, e.g., Journal
Nature Communications
Volume
15
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Agarwal, V., Chávez-Casillas, J., Inomura, K. et al. Patterns in the temporal complexity of global chlorophyll concentration. Nat Commun 15, 1522 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45976-8
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45976-8
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.