Hobart

Seminar Abstract

Friday 5 February 2010, 11.30am (Tas time)
CSIRO Auditorium, Hobart

Jason Holt
Frohlich Fellow
Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory
Liverpool, UK

The impacts of climate change and variability on the hydrography, circulation and primary production of coastal and shelf seas

Understanding and predicting how large scale atmospheric and oceanic variability affects the hydrography, circulation and primary productivity of shelf seas on multi-decadal time scales is an increasingly important area of research because of the consequences for marine ecosystems, and the goods and services that rely on them. For example, about 400 million people get more than 50% of their animal protein from fish (FAO, 2007), the large majority of which are caught in shelf/coastal seas. Progress in a range of projects active in the UK national and European contexts is reviewed. At the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (the UK’s leading research centre on the physical oceanography of shelf and coastal seas; www.pol.ac.uk) we have recently contributed to the marine component of the UK Climate Projections’09 project (in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley centre; http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/825/518/), using simulations of the POLCOMS shelf sea model forced by the Hadley Centre Regional Climate Model. These simulations demonstrate significant differences in the response of shelf seas to climate change compared with the open-ocean. Following this, the QUEST-FISH project provides us with an opportunity to explore the impacts of climate change on multiple shelf sea regions using the Global Coastal Ocean Modelling System (GCOMS; http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1890/939.abstract). This system uses the POLCOMS model coupled to the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM) to simulate any shelf sea around the globe (except in the Arctic), one-way nested in a global general circulation model. In QUEST-FISH (http://web.pml.ac.uk/quest-fish/) twelve GCOMS regions that account for >66% of the global fish catch are forced using output from a global couple climate model (IPSL-CM4) to simulate conditions typical of the end of the 19th century, present day and one possible future. This allows us to explore the susceptibility of different shelf sea types to climate change. Results from these simulations are used to drive dynamic community size spectrum models to investigate possible changes to potential fish productivity (in the absence of exploitation). In the European context, the 7th Framework Programme project MEECE (Marine Ecosystem Evolution in a Changing Environment; http://web.pml.ac.uk/meece/) explores the coupling from physics to fish in several European shelf seas, under multiple climate change and anthropogenic drivers. The focus for operational oceanography in Europe is the MYOCEAN project (http://www.myocean.eu.org/), in the context of multi-decadal change this provides a nexus for model development and the delivery of qualified model products to a range of stakeholders.

Seminar recording

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Location:
CSIRO = Marine Laboratories Auditorium, Castray Esplanade, Hobart

For further information, or to schedule a seminar, contact:
To schedule a seminar, contact:
Clothilde Langlais, (Oceanographic seminars) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (03) 6232 5399
Natalie Kelly, (Biology/Modelling seminars) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research 0438 452 483
Jillian Enraght-Moony, (seminar administrator) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (03) 6232 5320
Communications Manager, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC (03) 6226 2265
Margaret Hazelwood, Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies (IASOS) University of Tasmania (03) 6226 2971

Last updated 16/02/10