Dr. Richard Dewey, Oceans Networks Canada, University of Victoria

The Pacific Ocean has exhibited a number of major anomalies during the last few years, generally responding to large scale atmospheric patterns. Some of these patterns have been seen before, including the Pacific Oscillation dating back over nearly a century. However, recent occurrences have been detected under the shadow of climate change and in the presence of enhanced observing and forecast systems. Our ability to detect, characterize, and correlate these patterns continues to advance, while our ability to predict and understand the causes and linkages remains somewhat limited. In this overview of major events dating from 2012 through to the end of 2016, we will piece together some of the puzzle, or puzzles, peculiar to the northeast Pacific to reveal what we know and don’t know about this critical region.

About the speaker:

Richard Dewey is an Oceanographer, with degrees in Physics and Oceanography from the Universities of Victoria and British Columbia, respectively. He built his career as a sea-going observationalist, with stop-overs in Corvallis and Seattle before returning to UVic in 1995. As one of the original architects of the VENUS and NEPTUNE ocean observatories, he now manages the interdisciplinary science programs enabled by the comprehensive systems operated by Ocean Networks Canada, in Victoria. A thirty year member of CMOS, he is proud to represent Canada’s leading role in the world of cabled ocean observatories. With observing comes the demand for explaining strange signals, as was the case in 2014 when anomalously warm waters showed up in the northeast Pacific.