The Antares network of time series stations: An effort of the Americas to monitor global change

SANTAMARIA DEL ANGEL, E.; KAMPEL, M.; LUTZ, V.; MILLAN-NUÑEZ, R.; GONZALEZ-SILVERA, A.; DOGLIOTTI, A.I.; FROUIN, R.; MULLER-KARGER, F. E.; ANTARES NETWORK

Encuentro; The Meeting of the Americas; 2010

Ocean observing programs are the key to understand the impact of long term natural events on coastal and ocean resources. The Antares Network is an effort of scientists throughout the Americas to build such a network as a component of the global ChloroGIN Network. Counting with participants from Canada and USA, the Antares Network has observing systems on the Atlantic (Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina) and Pacific Oceans (Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico). These eleven stations represent specific biogeographic and biogeochemical sites. We generated time series of remote sensing regular products (SST, Chl a and nLw) with the principal goal to determine if these different sites show evidence of climate change impacts. Data from the following sensors were used: CZCS, OCTS, SeaWiFS, MODIS-Aqua, MERIS and AVHRR to produce multi-year time-series. An analysis was performed with match-ups between in situ (SSTin situ and Chl ain situ) and satellite data (SSTsat and Chl asat). Preliminary results using cluster analysis showed four groups: 1) Cartagena-Colombia and Ubatuba-Brazil; 2) Cariaco-Venezuela; 3) EGI-Argentina and EPEA-Argentina and 4) Concepcion-Chile, Tumaco-Colombia and Ensenada-Mexico (Ecuador’s station not included yet). A trend analysis with AVHRR data shows that Cartagena, Ubatuba, and the Cariaco Basin have an increase in temperature. The rest of the stations don’t show apparent change. To further explore this issue, we took the Ensenada-Mexico station as a reference, and compared its corresponding SST-AVHRR time series against a long record (1916 to the present) of SST in collected at a nearby site (La Jolla, Scripps Institution of Oceanography). This showed a good match and a long term increase in temperature. This preliminary analysis suggests that Cartagena and Ubatuba can be considered as a thermometer, the Cariaco shows large-scale changes in the tropical Atlantic and hence contribute to better understand the role of the ocean in the Climate Change. To learn more about the reaction of coastal sites, and improve the accuracy of prediction models, we need to continue and increase the effort put in gathering high quality in situ data from time-series stations in the region.