That is a very complex question to address. And with such a very short time series you really cannot make any sort of statement/assessment about changes in phytoplankton. In our studies we have 20+ years of time series data and we cannot even make any meaningful statements with regards to long term climate changes.

That being said, what types of data do you have? Cell counts, biomass (carbon), chlorophyll, species, functional groups, etc?

If you want to read some good literature about plankton time series take a look at the CalCOFI program, HOTS, BATS, and CCE-LTER. Those are all a great place to start to see how others have assessed climate on plankton. You'll find, however, that even these long running programs find that a very difficult question to address.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes.

Hi Ajit,

Its great that you have collected field data for over a period of 5-6 yrs. With this you can certainly go for a comparative investigation based on previous literature survey (over 30-50 yrs at least) and find out the trend in link with changing hydrographical parameters.

You have to do a lot of statistics and even ecological modelling to conclude your findings (to some extent !!). It all depends on what kind of data you are having.

Dr. Andrew, can we have your suggestions on the same?

Not really is the answer the data is too limited. However, it is possible to obtian more data from paleoreconstructions from the bay's sediments that an climatic data such a rainfall and ocean currents data bases (different nutrient and tempertures) are avilable to use directly contrauct laoding models and imputate missing blocks of dat for a better detrmination of the dynamics (Singular Spectrum Analysis).

Contact me if you wish to discuss such a program further.

A time series remote sensed assessment of chorophyll a and b distribution in aquatic systems including marine ecosystems to detect altered patterns in plankton productivity and distribution is a way to assess the impact of climate change on plankton.