Regime Shift Review

Detailing the Regime Shifts in Maine Coastal Current Behavior

Published

August 22, 2025

STARS Regime Change Review of Northeast US Region

This markdown reviews the various STARS regime shift results which were produced separately. I will begin at the largest geographic scales and work down to local timeseries:

Regime shifts for individual timeseries were tested using the STARS methodology. Any daily timeseries (temperature and salinity from ocean reanalysis models) were aggregated to a monthly temporal resolution, and any trends and seasonal cycles were removed.

The Marriott, Pope and Kendall (MPK) “pre-whitening” routine was used within the {rstars} algorithm to remove “red noise” (autoregressive processes, typically AR1) from the timeseries.

For more details on trend removal and pre-whitening methods see Rodionov 2006.

About: ecodata Indices

A number of ocean, climate, and ecosystem indices relevant to the Northeast US have been consolidate and made available from the ecodata package.

This is is an R data package developed by the Ecosystems Dynamics and Assessment Branch of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center for use in State of the Ecosystem (SOE) reporting. SOE reports are high-level overviews of ecosystem indicator status and trends occurring on the Northeast Continental Shelf. Unless otherwise stated, data are representative of specific Ecological Production Units (EPUs), referring to the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB), Georges Bank (GB), Gulf of Maine (GOM), and Scotian Shelf (SS). SOE reports are developed for US Fishery Management Councils (FMCs), and therefore indicator data for Scotian Shelf are included when available, but this is not always the case.

Technical Documentation for ecodata is available online, which covers the data sources and methods behind the development of these indices.

Shelf-Scale Ecodata Indices

There are 2-3 climate and oceanographic timeseries of interest within ecodata that operate at the broad regional scale of the Northeast shelf.

These include:

  1. The Gulf Stream Index (a metric indicating the North/South position of the Gulf Stream) based on SSH
  2. The Northeast Channel Slopewater Proportions (the percentage of various water masses at the 150-200m depth entering GOM, using NERACOOS buoy data)
  3. The North Atlantic Oscillation (atmospheric pressure differential between icelandic low and the Azores High)

These large-scale processes affect oceanographic conditions over large spatial scales, and and are likely to directly and indirectly impact other downstream local-scale environmental changes. These metrics are published with the state of the ecosystem report and can be pulled directly from the ecodata r package.

The Gulf Stream indices come as two monthly datasets, the other indices are annual. For regime shift testing I have adjusted the cutoff length accordingly to represent 7 years (following the methods of Stirnimann et al in their STARS review).

Shelf-Scale STARS Breakpoints

Each of these indicators has been independently evaluate for abrupt shifts in mean values using the STARS method. Because the slopewater proportion contains NA values, we cannot evaluate it for breaks unless we impute missing values somehow or take a subset of time that is uninterrupted.

Because the presence of long-term trends can influence the results of tests for breakpoint/mean shifts, any long-term trends for each metric have been removed prior to regime shift tests on these metrics.

The following plot shows what these timeseries look like after the removal of any monotonic trend:

Once the monotonic trends are removed, we are left with these results:

The results can be seen below:

Based on these results, there is evidence for breakpoints in the Gulf Stream Indices, and not in the NAO index.

Shelf-Scale Breaks
Time EPU shift_direction
gulf stream index
1957-12-01 All Shift Down
1971-09-01 All Shift Up
1977-08-01 All Shift Down
2003-01-01 All Shift Down
2012-02-01 All Shift Up
western gulf stream index
1962-02-01 All Shift Down
1971-07-01 All Shift Up
2003-01-01 All Shift Down
2011-12-01 All Shift Up
gulf stream index old
2003-01-01 All Shift Down

EPU-Scale Ecodata Indices

The EPU-scale indicators from ecodata that we are using for this project include:

  1. The cold-pool index
  2. The Northeast Channel Slopewater Proportion (from NERACOOS Buoy N)
  3. Metrics of primary production and zooplankton community
  4. Temperature and salinity timeseries specific to each area

Temperature and salinity is from either GLORYS or FVCOM, primary productivity is satellite derived (OC-CCI, SeaWiFS, MODIS-Aqua), and the zooplankton community indices are from the Gulf of Maine CPR transect.

Detrending Ecodata Indicators

Most of these indicators have data at the monthly time-scale. To aid in regime change detection long-term year over year changes have been removed.

Once detrended, they can be checked for signs of regime changes.

EPU-Scale ecodata Indices Breakpoints

The results from the STARS algorithm can be seen below:

Based on these results, we see no breakpoints in EPU-Scale measures of primary production or the cold pool dynamics.

Ecodata EPU Scale Breakpoints
Time EPU shift_direction

EPU-Scale FVCOM Temperature and Salinity

Temperature and salinity timeseries from FVCOM were processed and had their STARS testing done separately in STARS_FVCOM.qmd. here are their results:

Temp/Sal STARS Breaks

In STARS_FVCOM.qmd I used temperature timeseries to explore the impacts of performing regime shift testing on raw or detrended monthly data. These tests helped reinforce that the suggested preprocessing (detrending etc.) did help isolate step-changes in the timeseries which may be related to a regime change.

The following breaks were identified from these detrended series:

A change in SNE salinity appears to have occured around 1992.

Surface temperatures fell in SNE around 2002, but they rose again in 2011 along with GOM+GBK the same year.

EPU Scale Temp+Sal Breaks
time area_id shift_direction
Surface Temperature
2002-11-15 gom_gbk Shift Down
2002-11-15 sne Shift Down
2009-11-15 gom_gbk Shift Up
2011-05-15 sne Shift Up

CPR Community PCA Index

Work by Andy Pershing helped develop an understanding that the Gulf of Mane’s zooplankton community in a given year is often one of two groups with different life history and size characteristics. There is a large copepod community, of which Calanus finmarchicus (a large bodied, lipid rich species) is prominent, and a second community which is composed of smaller-bodied and more opportunistic zooplankton species. These two communities compete for the same prey resources, and are typically out of phase with one-another. A principal component analysis using the continuous plankton recorded data has been used as a proxy for which community is dominant each year.

Taking PCA timeseries as proxies for those communities and evaluating them for breakpoints gives the following results.

ECOMON Community PCA Index

Large and Small Copepod Index

https://noaa-edab.github.io/tech-doc/zoo_abundance_anom.html?q=zoopl#copepod

Abundance anomalies are computed from the expected abundance on the day of sample collection. Abundance anomaly time series are constructed for Centropages typicus, Pseudocalanus spp., Calanus finmarchicus, and total zooplankton biovolume. The small-large copepod size index is computed by averaging the individual abundance anomalies of Pseudocalanus spp., Centropages hamatus, Centropages typicus, and Temora longicornis, and subtracting the abundance anomaly of Calanus finmarchicus. This index tracks the overall dominance of the small bodied copepods relative to the largest copepod in the Northeast U.S. region, Calanus finmarchicus.

NEEDS: MCC & Lobster Predator Indices

There are two EPU-Scale indices that we need to develop. This is the MCC index, and a lobster predator abundance index.

The Gulf of Maine Coastal Current plays an important role in transporting lobster larva and their recruitment form year-to-year. The degree of “connected-ness” of the Western and Eastern portions of this current have been used in the past to inform expectations of lobster recruitment.

Local/Nearshore Shifts

Conditions closer to the coast show the following long-term trends:

FVCOM Offshore Long Term Salinity Trends
Monotonic Trends Evaluated by Mann-Kendall Test
var Trend? Decadal Rate
eastern maine
bottom_temperature TRUE 0.007
surface_temperature TRUE 0.009
new jersey shore
bottom_temperature TRUE 0.015
surface_temperature TRUE 0.014
central maine
surface_temperature TRUE 0.011
eastern mass
surface_temperature TRUE 0.018
western maine
surface_temperature TRUE 0.016
FVCOM Offshore Long Term Salinity Trends
Monotonic Trends Evaluated by Mann-Kendall Test
var Trend? Decadal Rate
central maine
bottom_salinity TRUE -0.001
surface_salinity TRUE -0.003
eastern mass
bottom_salinity TRUE -0.004
surface_salinity TRUE -0.006
five fathom bank
bottom_salinity TRUE 0.007
surface_salinity TRUE 0.007
long island sound
bottom_salinity TRUE 0.005
surface_salinity TRUE 0.006
new jersey shore
bottom_salinity TRUE 0.004
surface_salinity TRUE 0.004
southern mass
bottom_salinity TRUE -0.003
surface_salinity TRUE -0.003
virginia shore
bottom_salinity TRUE 0.003
surface_salinity TRUE 0.003
western maine
bottom_salinity TRUE -0.002
surface_salinity TRUE -0.004

Temperature and Salinity Breaks

Salinity

Inshore Salinity Regime Breaks
time area_id shift_direction
Surface Salinity
1991-07-02 virginia shore Shift Down
1996-07-02 five fathom bank Shift Down
Bottom Salinity
1992-08-02 virginia shore Shift Down
1996-07-02 five fathom bank Shift Down

Temperatures

Inshore Scale Temperature Regime Breaks
time area_id shift_direction
Surface Temperature
1986-05-15 central maine Shift Down
1986-05-15 western maine Shift Down
1986-05-15 long island sound Shift Down
1987-02-15 eastern maine Shift Down
2002-11-15 eastern mass Shift Down
2002-11-15 new jersey shore Shift Down
2003-01-15 western maine Shift Down
2009-11-15 eastern maine Shift Up
2009-11-15 central maine Shift Up
2009-11-15 western maine Shift Up
2009-11-15 eastern mass Shift Up
2011-02-15 long island sound Shift Up
2011-02-15 new jersey shore Shift Up
2011-02-15 five fathom bank Shift Up
2011-03-15 southern mass Shift Up
Bottom Temperature
1986-05-15 long island sound Shift Down
2002-11-15 southern mass Shift Down
2002-11-15 new jersey shore Shift Down
2002-11-15 virginia shore Shift Down
2009-11-15 southern mass Shift Up
2011-02-15 long island sound Shift Up
2011-02-15 new jersey shore Shift Up
2011-02-15 virginia shore Shift Up

Days in Key Temperature Ranges

In addition to breaks in absolute temperatures, there is interest in the amount of time spent in favorable (12-18C) and unfavorable conditions (20C).

These use daily bottom temperatures:

Temperature Suitability Shifts

The results can be seen below:

Based on the annual totals, we see limited breakpoints in suitable thermal habitat.

Temperature Suitability Scale Breaks
time area_id shift_direction
Heat Stress Conditions >18C
1992-01-01 virginia shore Shift Down
2004-01-01 rhode island shore Shift Down
2011-01-01 five fathom bank Shift Up
2012-01-01 rhode island shore Shift Up
Below Preferred Conditions <10C
2011-01-01 new jersey shore Shift Down

And restricted to these areas

Summary Figures / Tables

Do the trend evaluation for everything:

Summary table should have the region, the variable, whether there is a trend or not, what the rate is, then whether there have been breakpoints, and when they were (mm/yyyy).