Forecasts of El Niño climate events are routinely provided and distributed, but the limits of El Niño predictability are still the subject of debate. Some recent studies suggest that the predictability is largely limited by the effects of high-frequency atmospheric 'noise', whereas others emphasize limitations arising from the growth of initial errors in model simulations. Here we present retrospective forecasts of the interannual climate fluctuations in the tropical Pacific Ocean for the period 1857 to 2003, using a coupled ocean-atmosphere model. The model successfully predicts all prominent El Niño events within this period at lead times of up to two years. Our analysis suggests that the evolution of El Niño is controlled to a larger degree by self-sustaining internal dynamics than by stochastic forcing. Model-based prediction of El Niño therefore depends more on the initial conditions than on unpredictable atmospheric noise. We conclude that throughout the past century, El Niño has been more predictable than previously envisaged.

The PICES CCCC (North Pacific Marine Science Organization, ClimateChange and Carrying Capacity program) MODEL Task Team achieved a consensus on the structure of a prototype lower trophic level ecosystem model for the North Pacific Ocean, and named it the North Pacific Ecosystem Model for Understanding Regional Oceanography, "NEMURO". Through an extensive dialog between modelers, plankton biologists and oceanographers, an extensive review was conducted to define NEMURO's process equations and their parameter values for distinct geographic regions. We present in this paper the formulation, structure and governing equations of NEMURO as well as examples to illustrate its behavior. NEMURO has eleven state variables: nitrate, ammonium, small and large phytoplankton biomass, small, large and predatory zooplankton biomass, particulate and dissolved organic nitrogen, particulate silica, and silicic acid concentration. Several applications reported in this issue of Ecological Modelling have successfully used NEMURO, and an extension that includes fish as an additional state variable. Applications include studies of the biogeochemistry of the North Pacific, and variations of its ecosystem's lower trophic levels and two target fish species at regional and basin-scale levels, and on time scales from seasonal to interdecadal.5

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A high-resolution, 3-dimensional primitive equation model is used to investigate the crossshelf exchange in the East China Sea (ECS). Favorable comparisons between field data and model simulations from both climatological run and hindcast run for 2006 indicate that the model has essential skills in capturing the key physics of the ECS. Temporal and spatial variations of the cross-shelf exchanges are further analyzed. It was demonstrated from both observations and simulations that in 2006 high saline water could be delivered to the north of the Changjiang River mouth (near 32 N) as a result of stronger than typical cross-shelf exchanges at the shelf break and flows through the Taiwan Strait with an annual mean rate of 2.59 and 1.83 Sv, respectively. A few new places at the shelf break were also identified where persistent and vigorous onshore or offshore exchanges occur throughout the year. Cross-shelf exchange is largely determined by the along-shelf geostrophic balance with weak seasonality, which is modulated in upper layers by northeasterly monsoon from early-fall to late-spring and at seabed by bottom friction during December-January, May, and August-September. Nonlinear effect, with strong spatial variations and intraseasonal variability, is a secondary but persistent contributor to the net seaward transport, except for northeast of Taiwan where the nonlinear effect becomes significant but more varied.