Costa Rica Thermal Dome

Assembled from 9 blocks · 2 evidence · 4 related

1. Story
2. A wind- and current-driven upwelling feature in the eastern tropical Pacific whose mean position is near 9°N 90°W, at the eastern end of a thermocline ridge between the westward North Equatorial Current and the eastward North Equatorial Countercurrent. It can be up to about 1,000 km across and it moves: in some years it sits closer to the coast, in others further offshore. The shallow, seasonally predictable thermocline makes it far more productive than the surrounding tropical ocean, which is why a warm-water destination can also be a feeding destination - blue whales tagged off California in summer have been tracked to it and to the waters west of it in winter.
3. Knowledge
4. Costa Rica Thermal Dome
5. Connections
6. Eastern North Pacific Blue Whale Migration
7. Evidence
8. The mean position of the Costa Rica Dome is near 9°N 90°W, at the eastern end of a thermocline ridge between the North Equatorial Current and the North Equatorial Countercurrent; the feature can be up to about 1,000 km across, shifts inshore and offshore between years, and supports phytoplankton and zooplankton biomass higher than surrounding eastern tropical Pacific waters. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary attributed to this literature; neither the paper nor the NOAA report was fetched.
9. Transmitters were attached to 171 blue whales off California and in the Gulf of California between 1993 and 2008; a related analysis used 159 Argos tags deployed mainly off California in late summer between 1993 and 2007, of which 92 tracks exceeded seven days. Tagged whales moved south in winter to Baja California, the Gulf of California and waters at and west of the Costa Rica Dome; five whales tagged in 1999 wintered in the Gulf of California, identifying it as a wintering ground. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary attributed to these sources; neither the institute page nor the preprint could be fetched.