Fig. 2: The Newfoundland and Labrador Climate Index (NLCI).

The NLCI (unitless) is the average of 10 environmental time series: the Winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, air temperature (Air Temp), sea ice season duration and maximum area, the number of icebergs drifting on the NL shelves, sea surface temperature (SST) of the NL shelves, vertically averaged temperature (T) and salinity (S) at Station 27 (S27), cold intermediate layer (CIL) core temperature at Station 27, summer CIL area on the hydrographic sections Seal Island, Bonavista Bay and Flemish Cap, and spring and fall bottom temperatures in NAFO Div. 3LNOPs and 2HJ3KLNO (See Cyr and Galbraith, 2021 for details¹⁹). The relative contribution of each sub-index to the NLCI is proportional to the length of each bar in the stacked bar plot, while the averaged value is reported in a scorecard at the bottom of the figure. Different climate phases are identified with orange and blue shades for warm and cold, respectively. A new phase is identified when the NLCI is positive or negative for at least three successive years. Qualitative information on the fisheries during the different climate phases has been added with black arrows.