. The Eastern Bering Sea Shelf : oceanography and resources / edited by Donald W. Hood and John A. Calder . 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 YEARS Figure 3-1. Sea surface temperatures from the Pribilof Island and Bristol Bay regions of the eastern Bering Sea (Niebauer 1978). Pribilof Islands. This may bias the SST to warmer temperatures. An example of this is a comparison of the SSTs for 1975 and 1976. In general, 1976 was a colder year (Niebauer 1980) and yet the SST was C higher (Fig. 3-1). However, shelf-wide bottom temperatures for June 1975 and 1976 (Fig. 9-3, Nieb
. The Eastern Bering Sea Shelf : oceanography and resources / edited by Donald W. Hood and John A. Calder . 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 YEARS Figure 3-1. Sea surface temperatures from the Pribilof Island and Bristol Bay regions of the eastern Bering Sea (Niebauer 1978). Pribilof Islands. This may bias the SST to warmer temperatures. An example of this is a comparison of the SSTs for 1975 and 1976. In general, 1976 was a colder year (Niebauer 1980) and yet the SST was C higher (Fig. 3-1). However, shelf-wide bottom temperatures for June 1975 and 1976 (Fig. 9-3, Niebauer, Chapter 9, this volume) were nearly identical. The greater ice extent in 1976 relative to 1975 may have been responsible for the slightly higher temperature bias in 1976. Although there may be occasionally nonperiodic bias to the SST, the mean annual SST time series in Fig. 3-1 is considered precise enough for this study. RESULTS Fig. 3-1 is a time series of mean annual SST from the region of the Pribilof Islands and Bristol Bay. The annual SST was near the 16-year mean of C in 1963 before rising to C in 1967. SST then fell to C, or C below normal, in 1975. Since then, there has been a rapid rise to C, or C above normal, in 1978. Similar data from Bristol Bay display similar characteristics. Thus, over the five- year period 1967-71, SST decreased by C; over the last five years (1974-78) there has been nearly a C rise in mean annual SST of the southeastern Bering Sea shelf water. Inspection of the monthly mean SST from which Fig. 3-1 is derived shows that in spring (March and April) 1975 the SST was about C below the 16-year mean, while by spring (April and May) 1978 the SST was about C above normal, giving a rise of nearly C over three years. It has been suggested that these fluctuations in SST are due to large-scale changes in atmospheric circulation, or more specifically the winter circulation (Niebauer 1980), over the North P
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