AbstractSardine fisheries in the Iberian Atlantic shelf (36°N–44.5°N) show decadal‐scale cycles. In the late 1990s, a positive phase in sardine stock was expected; on the contrary, catches have declined until now. Regime shifts in climatic and oceanographic variables on different scales (as forcing factor) and shifts in sardine stock (as result) have been used with the aim of identifying the physical variables that explain most of the sardine population variance in the region. Circa 1998, when last sardine regime shift was detected, the main patterns of large‐scale atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere with influence in the study area namely Northern Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and East Atlantic (EA) pattern changed and coupled in a combination that led to a rise in sea surface temperature and a decline in the coastal upwelling intensity. Several years with a downwelling situation in average in the main spawning and feeding Iberian sardine areas would have affected the stock abundance, averting the return to the projected positive regime. The sardine negative regime shift was detected first in the regions of the study located further north. The regional variable latent heat flux that groups a set of environmental processes related to the ocean–atmosphere heat exchanges and so with the turbulence manages to explain the 72% of sardine recruitment.