Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) researchers played a starring role in an ensemble cast of marine ecosystem modellers working together on the Fisheries and Marine Intercomparison Project (Fish-MIP).
The project used nine different computer models, created by different teams around the world, to illustrate with greater clarity and range how ocean life will be impacted by Earth’s warming climate.
“You can think about it like cars,” said Juliano Palacios-Abrantes, a graduate of the IOF’s PhD program currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin. “The models are all like different car models, they all have similar objectives but are constructed a bit different from each other. The models draw a picture of how the world is today, and how it will look at the end of the century. The idea behind using several models is that you build some security in your results.”
The models are constantly being updated to include greater detail, account for technological advancements and adopt new knowledge of ecology and climate change. This is the sixth time the group has come together to produce a new iteration, the previous being in 2014.
The red signifies a decrease in biomass, and the blue signifies an increase. The change is by the end of the century relative to 1990 to 1999.
Palacios-Abrantes worked alongside IOF Director William Cheung to run the DBEM, a model developed by Cheung that depicted how the distribution of marine fish will change depending on ocean water oxygen levels, acidity, salinity and temperature, among others.
Working on a paper with over 30 authors comes with challenges, according to Palacios-Abrantes.
“Running the model is not that different because at the end, all of the data part was done between me and William,” he said. “The writing though, it’s pretty tricky. Four or five main authors wrote the first draft, and they put it on a Google doc, and then everyone contributes to it. It’s interesting how you see from the first draft, it just becomes a rainbow on the Google doc.”
The new models predict that climate change will have even more severe impacts on marine life than earlier models projected.
“The core message from these runs with the FishMiP models is that there will be lower biomasses in the future ocean, especially under high-emission scenarios,” said IOF professor and co-author Villy Christensen, who contributed the EcoOcean model that he is developing jointly with Marta Coll and Jeroen Steenbeek, also co-authors on the study. “The results also show regional differences, generally with potential for higher biomasses at high latitudes and lower in the warmer parts of the oceans.”
The study is designed to be of direct use for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which evaluates impacts of climate change on Earth’s biodiversity, Christensen said.
He also expects that it will be used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in future climate change assessments.
The study “Next-generation ensemble projections reveal higher climate risks for marine ecosystems” was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Tags: Ecopath with Ecosim (EWE), Faculty, IOF postdoctoral fellows, IPBES, IPCC, Juliano Palacios-Abrantes, Modelling, Research, Villy Christensen, William Cheung