Undergraduate Thesis Or Project
 

Relationship Between Winter Downwelling Conditions and Summer Hypoxia Severity Along the Oregon Coast

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/undergraduate_thesis_or_projects/v118rg47q

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  • Hypoxia is a naturally occurring phenomenon that happens seasonally off the Oregon coast. As a consequence, there has been a great deal of research focused around analyzing the strength and duration of the hypoxic event during the summer season. This paper, however, takes an innovative approach by looking at the preceding winter seasons to determine the impact initial conditions of an oncoming summer season have on the hypoxic event. The methodology presented here has two facets: 1. Analysis of the atmospheric conditions during winter; and 2. Multiple model simulations with various atmospheric forcing. While the atmospheric condition analysis does not lead to any conclusive correlation between the winter wind stress and summer dissolved oxygen levels most likely due to scarcity of data, the results of the model simulations indicate otherwise. The simulated ocean conditions using atmospheric forcing from three contrasting years, while using the climatological biochemical and physical initial conditions in January show that the winter conditions could lead to low levels of dissolved oxygen on the Oregon shelf in the pre-upwelling season. When the biological components of the model are removed in order to isolate the impact of biological versus physical forcing, model predictions differ only minimally; this result validates, to some degree, the idea that winter/early spring atmospheric conditions impact the strength of the ensuing summer hypoxia.
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