Intraseasonal patterns in coastal plankton biomass off central Chile derived from satellite observations and a biochemical model

Abstract Subseasonal (5–130 days) environmental variability can strongly affect plankton dynamics, but is often overlooked in marine ecology studies. We documented the main subseasonal patterns of plankton biomass in the coastal upwelling system off central Chile, the southern part of the Humboldt System. Subseasonal variability was extracted from temporal patterns in satellite data of wind stress, sea surface temperature, and chlorophyll from the period 2003–2011, and from a realistically forced eddy-resolving physical-biochemical model from 2003 to 2008. Although most of the wind variability occurs at submonthly frequencies (