The Peruvian upwelling system (PUS) is the most productive Eastern Boundary Upwelling System (EBUS) of the world ocean. Contrarily to higher latitude EBUSs, there is no consensus yet on the response of upwelling-favorable winds to regional climate change in this region. Global climate models are not able to reproduce the nearshore surface winds, and only a few downscaling studies have been performed by using relatively coarse-grid atmospheric models forced by idealized climate change scenarios. In the present study, the impact of climate change on the PUS upwelling-favorable winds was assessed using a high resolution regional atmospheric model to dynamically downscale the multi-model mean projection of an ensemble of 31 CMIP5 global models under the RCP8.5 worst-case climate scenario. We performed a 10-year retrospective simulation (1994–2003) forced by NCEP2 reanalysis data and a 10-y...

This research is part of A. Chamorro’s PhD thesis, funded by the fellowship from CIENCIACTIVA/CONCYTEC-PERU at the University Pierre and Marie CURIE of Paris, France. It is also part of the IDB project PE-G1001/PE-T1297 (Adaptation to Climate Change of the Fishery Sector and Marine-Coastal Ecosystem of Peru), and it is a contribution to the cooperative agreement between the Instituto del Mar del Perú (IMARPE) and the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD), the LMI DISCOH and JEAI EMACEP. The simulations were performed on the supercomputer Curie from the GENCI at the CEA (projects x2014011140, x2015011140 and x2016011140). Francois Pinsard and Sebastien Masson are acknowledged for their help in the making of lateral boundary forcing for the regional atmospheric model. Francis Codron, Clémentine Junquas, and lab colleagues from LMOECC at IMARPE are acknowledged for useful di...

The Peruvian scallop (Argopecten purpuratus) is the second main contributor to the total catch of mollusks in Peru, after jumbo squid. There are two main scallop banks populations in northern Peru: Lobos de Tierra Island (LTI) and Sechura Bay (SB). Despite a continuous, intense relocation of seeds from LTI, the natural bank population still persists there. To understand this, we studied larval connectivity between LTI and SB using the first invertebrate larval transport biophysical model developed in the region. Larval local retention were 2.4% and 1.57% on average at LTI and SB respectively, while larval transport from SB to LTI was 0.02% on average and 0.07% in the opposite direction. Both larval retention and larval transport increased with spawning depth and were highest in austral summer. Two main larval transport paths from SB to LTI were identified, resulting from a combination of...