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Anomalies of NetPrimary Productivity under CompoundMarine Heatwaves and Microplastics
Summary
When ocean heatwaves and microplastic pollution hit the same area, tiny ocean plants called phytoplankton (which produce oxygen, feed fish, and help absorb carbon dioxide) don't just react locally, the effects can show up in unexpected places far from where the heat and plastic actually are. This matters because current monitoring that only checks pollution "hotspots" might miss where the real damage to fisheries and ocean health is happening, meaning we may need to track effects downstream along ocean currents instead.
Abstract Marine heatwaves (MHW) and microplastics (MPs) pollution increasingly co-occur, yet the response of phytoplankton net primary production (NPP) to this compound condition remains incompletely characterized, in part because analyses confined to local conditions may overlook nonlocal influences. Here we developed an adaptive machine learning framework to evaluate global NPP anomalies under co-occurring MHW and MPs. The results indicate that comparable compound-stress regimes corresponded to divergent NPP outcomes depending on regional nutrient backgrounds: an anomalous increase coincided with nitrate replenishment in oligotrophic waters, whereas an anomalous decrease coincided with silicate accumulation in iron-limited, diatom-dominated waters. Furthermore, pronounced NPP anomalies frequently exhibited a geographic offset from heatwave cores, a spatial mismatch consistent with a shock-transmission-spillover (STS) framework, here interpreted as a spatial teleconnection between the thermal forcing and the ecological response. Pending in situ validation, these observed associations indicate that monitoring confined to thermal or pollution sources may misplace ecological risk. Consequently, these findings support a shift toward downstream monitoring along current pathways relevant to fisheries and carbon uptake.