Shoreward Migration of the Shelfbreak Front in the Middle Atlantic Bight
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Northwest Atlantic continental shelf is home to one of the richest ecosystems in the world, however it is also among the fastest warming regions globally and experienced multiple temperature extreme events, termed marine heatwaves, in the recent decade. These ongoing changes pose a large challenge for the highly valuable fishing industry in the Northeast U.S.. The generally cooler and fresher shelf water is supplied by subpolar waters via the Labrador current, while offshore waters in the Slope Sea, that is the continental slope region bounded by the Gulf Stream and the shelfbreak, are of subtropical origin. Warm core rings shedding of the Gulf Stream transport warm and saline water but also nutrients shoreward and frequently cause cross-shelf intrusions when interacting with bathymetry. The boundary of the two water masses is the Shelfbreak Front and the foot of the front is climatologically found over the 100\,m isobath in the northern Middle Atlantic Bight. While marking a transition of physical properties, the front and its position has also large implications for fisheries as temperate species are found shoreward of the front and more tropical species remain offshore of the front in the warm, saline waters. Monitoring the frontal position is challenging and requires high-resolution sampling, however large and persistent diversions may be detectable in coarser and more sporadic observations. Using data from the Coastal Pioneer Array by the Ocean Observative Initiative along with recent observations obtained during research cruises on the continental shelf and satellite-based sea surface salinity, we assess indicators of the frontal position in recent years. In 2021 the front migrated tens of km inshore for multiple months resulting in irregularities for the regional fishermen. This migration was likely connected to the presence of multiple warm core rings in the Slope Sea, driving record temperatures over the slope and shelf. We address the question whether similar frontal shifts occur more frequently and discuss how these maybe connected to larger scale forcing such as a shifting Gulf Stream, a slowing Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or changes in the supply of subpolar water to the shelf.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".