Norway and the United States: Climate Change and Marine Ecosystems (NUCCME)

Norway and the US have been collaborating over the last decade on research of major issues on marine ecosystems. In May 2014, they will hold an international scientific workshop, this time to tackle the effects of human-induced climate change on the ocean s due to increa sing greenhouse gases. Off Norway and the US, the atmosphere and the oceans are warming, seasonal sea ice, where present, is retreating, and salinityand the ocean circulation patterns are changing which in turn are impacting marine food we bs, including fish populations. The principal objectives of the workshop to be held in Norway are to examine what future climate will look like, how such projections can be used in fisheries management, and to determine the potential economic and societal consequences of climate change in the two regions. New global and regional climate models will be used during the workshop to determine what atmospheric and oceanic changes can be expected in the future and to estimate how reliable they are. We will the n turn our attention to determining how to use such information in the management of marine ecosystems, particularly fish resources. Ways of incorporating projected climate change effects into fishery ecosystem models will be explored and various manageme nt options under the expected future climate change will be examined to help determine what will be the best management plan. The models will build upon prior identified links between climate changes and suspected effects on living marine resources. The workshop will also examine the effects on society and coastal communities. Of interest will be the effects of future climate change on the fishing industry. Other issues that will be addressed include the necessity of changing fishing treaties if there are large scale changes in fish distributions, the role of government regulation on fishing practices, and effects on fishing communities, including population loss or gain, under climate change.

The NUCCME project will hold a scientific workshop in Norway in May 2014 for the next round of bi-lateral ecosystem collaborative studies between Norway and the United States.It will explore how the outputs from downscaled climate models can be used as in puts into tactical and strategic models for managing marine ecosystems and their living marine resources. It will also determine the economic and societal impacts to the two countries of affects on the fisheries. The workshop will be conducted jointly wi th the Nordic network: Climate impact on fish, fishery industry and management in the Nordic Seas (CLIFFIMA). The workshop will be organized into three research tracks (i.e. break-out groups) to focus on future climate projections such as from the recent IPCC model scenarios. The first group will explore how these projections can be used in ecosystem models to determine the likely changes under anthropogenic climate change to the lower trophic levels, develop ecosystem indicators of such change, and dete rmine related variables indicative of ecosystem productivity. The second group will examine models of living marine resources to explore how to include climate features in future projections and setting of harvest control rules. The third group, mainly from CLIFFIMA will consider the potential economic and societal consequences of the projections. We envision the workshop to run worked examples from Norwegian and US ecosystems and explore management strategy evaluations (MSEs) under different climate an d fisheries scenarios. The emphasis will be to compare the worked examples from these ecosystems and explore the results of the different MSEs in the two regions.