Johnson, G.C., and A.R. Parsons (2015): Overview. In State of the Climate in 2014, Global Oceans. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(7), S59.
Every year NOAA leads a team of international scientists in issuing a report on the state of the climate in the year just passed, published as a supplement to Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Ten Federal, JISAO, and JIMAR scientists resident at PMEL co-authored four of twelve sections and a sidebar in the Global Oceans chapter and a section in the Arctic chapter for the State of the Climate in 2014 report, published in July 2015. In addition, Dr. Gregory Johnson served as co-editor of the Global Oceans chapter. Recognizing the significant roles the oceans played in 2014 climate, the report cover features a PMEL Argo float, deployed in September 2007 and still active in July 2015. Dr. Johnson’s overview for the Global Oceans chapter noted the borderline El Niño of 2014 and associated shift of warm water from the western to eastern equatorial Pacific, the warm-water “Blob” in the Northeast Pacific and associated reduction in phytoplankton chorophyll, and the transition to the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The ocean heat content section of that chapter, led by Drs. Johnson and John Lyman, reported record high global integrals of ocean heat content, significant since the ocean takes up over 90% of the excess heat from greenhouse gas increases and that warming contributes to sea level rise. The sea surface salinity section, also led by Drs. Johnson and Lyman, documented changes in surface salinity patterns consistent with an increase in the hydrological cycle over the oceans, as expected in a warming planet. Drs. Nick Bond and Meghan Cronin led a sidebar on the causes, evolution, and initial ecological impacts of the aforementioned “Blob”. The ocean carbon section, authored by Drs. Richard Feely, Brendan Carter, Jeremy Mathis, and Chris Sabine, reported on recent estimates of the ocean uptake of carbon dioxide, about 10–30% of human emissions, using both air-sea flux observations and inventories of subsurface carbon. Finally, Drs. James Overland and Muyin Wang contributed to the Air temperature section for the Arctic chapter, noting the strong warming trend in the Arctic since about 1980 as well as the high amplitude winter jet stream pattern that brought warm air from the south into Alaska and Northern Europe and cold air southward from the Arctic into Eastern North America.
The report garnered significant media attention, including an editorial board piece in the Washington Post that dedicated a paragraph and a half to details of ocean warming, sea level rise, and salinity changes and a segment on NPR's Morning Edition.
PMEL-authored articles in State of the Climate in 2014:
Johnson, G.C., and A.R. Parsons (2015): Overview. In State of the Climate in 2014, Global Oceans. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(7), S59.
Bond, N.A., M.F. Cronin, and H. Freeland (2015): The Blob: An extreme warm anomaly in the northeast Pacific. In State of the Climate in 2014, Global Oceans. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(7), S62–S63.
Johnson, G.C., J.M. Lyman, J. Antonov, N. Bindoff, T. Boyer, C.M. Domingues, S.A. Good, M. Ishii, and J.K. Willis (2015): Ocean heat content. In State of the Climate in 2014, Global Oceans. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(7), S64–S66, S68.
Johnson, G.C., J.M. Lyman, G.S.E. Lagerloef, and H.-Y. Kao (2015): Sea surface salinity. In State of the Climate in 2014, Global Oceans. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(7), S71–S74.
Feely, R.A., R. Wanninkhof, B. Carter, J.T. Mathis, and C.L. Sabine (2015): Global ocean carbon cycle. In State of the Climate in 2014, Global Oceans. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(7), S87–S90.
Overland, J., E. Hanna, I. Hanssen-Bauer, S.-J. Kim, J. Walsh, M. Wang, and U.S. Bhatt (2015): Arctic Air temperature. In State of the Climate in 2014, The Arctic. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(7), S128–S129.