Spatial variability in oceanographic conditions of sea waters off Koreain relation to the regional climate changes during the past 40 years

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We describe temperature changes in both of the land and ocean at a local scale to suggest that human factors could drive warming influences on coastal waters, impacting marine ecosystems and changing dominant species in fishery catches. Spatially-explicit analyses, based on available meteorological and oceanographic data from 1968 to 2005, suggested that industrialization processes in South Korea and related global, anthropogenic factors have apparently increased land surface temperatures by 1.267oC during the past 37 years, at least for the urban areas, and consequently coastal sea surface temperatures have increased by 0.975oC. However, the increasing trend of the sea water temperatures diminished with waters depths (0-100 m). The estimated linear trend of air temperature in South Korea is 2.6 times higher than the linear warming trend of 0.013oC per yr-1 for the past 50 years reported by the IPCC(IPCC, 2007). Together with anthropogenic and natural climate-driven regime shifts at global scale, rapid industrialization in South Korea could have been driving warming influences on coastal sea waters, changing oceanographic conditions and marine ecosystems. We suggest that future ecosystem and fishery management plans should accommodate and prepare for such long-term climate changes.