Global distribution changes in coccolithophore blooms

The global distribution of high Remote-sensing reflectance (Rrs) waters visible from satellite, likely associated with coccolithophore blooms, has changed markedly over the past 40 years. Over that period there has globally been an overall decrease in bloom area of 1.15 million km2 but with notable Rrs increases in the Barents Sea and the Antarctic Ocean. The primary drivers of these fundamental changes to ocean biogeochemistry have been investigated using Machine Learning techniques together with contemporaneous global multi-decadal time-series of sea-surface temperature (SST); wind speed and stress; sea level anomaly (SLA); photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) and; mixed layer depth (MLD). When split into ocean provinces different drivers of positive and negative trends in Rrs were found to dominate in different regions, but generally increases were found to coincide with changes to SST, PAR and reductions to wind-speed.