The role of global oscillations and teleconnections within atmosphere and ocean in regional coastal management

The coastal waters of the world respond and are vulnerable to a variety of natural and anthropogenic driven phenomena, many of which are linked to climate, climate variability and climate change. Long-term and large-scale flow interactions between ocean and atmosphere have been investigated for several decades; nevertheless their implications over the coastal zone have received much less attention from the scientific community in the coastal management arena. This paper identifies challenges inherent in addressing decadal to multidecadal ocean–atmosphere phenomena for coastal management practices. The understanding of these low-frequency signals, global teleconnections within the atmosphere and the ocean, climate variability and change are key issues to clarify their impacts over the coastal zone at regional level. To explore the importance of global natural climate variability in the long-term regional coastal planning and management this paper uses meteorological, agricultural and fishery data from the Mexican’s coastal states of the Gulf of Mexico that shows multidecadal variability. Especially relevant for the implementation of regional long-term coastal management plans in the Mexican’s states of the Gulf of Mexico are the North Atlantic Oscillation and Multidecadal Atlantic Oscillation. A critical finding of this study was that more research focused on the decadal and multidecadal behavior of global signals is required, to clarify their effects over the world’s coastal zone, in order to attain a clear view of the natural processes to be addressed in the long term regional coastal management.