Climate and subsurface sea temperature in Bahia Culebra, Costa Rica

Bahia Culebra, Golfo de Papagayo, Costa Rica is a seasonal upwelling area. To determine the relationship of climate and the subsurface temperature variability at Bahia Culebra, we analyzed nine records of sea subsurface temperature from the Bay, continuously recorded from 1998 to 2010. The analysis characterized the annual cycle and explored the influence of different climate variability sources on the subsurface sea temperature and air temperature recorded in Bahia Culebra. Data from an automatic meteorological station in the bay were studied, obtaining the annual and daily cycle for air surface temperature and wind speed. Sea surface temperature (SST) trend from 1854 to 2011 was calculated from reanalysis for the region that coverts 9-11 degrees N, 85-87 degrees W. Because of the positive SST trend identified in this region, results showed that annual and daily cycles in Bahia Culebra should be studied under a warming scenario since 1854, that is coherent with the global warming results and its climate variability is influenced by El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Equatorial Pacific and by atmospheric forcing triggered by climate variability with Atlantic Ocean origin, because warm (cold) events in Bahia Culebra tend to occur in concordance with positive & negative (negative & positive) anomalies in Nino 3.4 (NAO) index.