Observational Needs Supporting Marine Ecosystems Modeling and Forecasting: From the Global Ocean to Regional and Coastal Systems

Abstract

Many coastal areas host rich marine ecosystems and are also centers of economic activities, including fishing, shipping and recreation. Due to the socioeconomic and ecological importance of these areas, predicting relevant indicators of the ecosystem state on sub-seasonal to interannual timescales is gaining increasing attention. Depending on the application, forecasts may be sought for variables and indicators spanning physics (e.g., sea level, temperature, currents), chemistry (e.g., nutrients, oxygen, pH), and biology (from viruses to top predators). Many components of the marine ecosystem are known to be influenced by leading modes of climate variability, which provide a physical basis for predictability. However, prediction capabilities remain limited by the lack of a clear understanding of the physical and biological processes Frontiers in Marine Science | www.frontiersin.org 1 October 2019 | Volume 6 | Article 623 Capotondi et al. Marine Ecosystems Modeling and Forecastinginvolved, as well as by insufficient observations for forecast initialization and verification. The situation is further complicated by the influence of climate change on ocean conditions along coastal areas, including sea level rise, increased stratification, and shoaling of oxygen minimum zones. Observations are thus vital to all aspects of marine forecasting: statistical and/or dynamical model development, forecast initialization, and forecast validation, each of which has different observational requirements, which may be also specific to the study region. Here, we use examples from United States (U.S.) coastal applications to identify and describe the key requirements for an observational network that is needed to facilitate improved process understanding, as well as for sustaining operational ecosystem forecasting. We also describe new holistic observational approaches, e.g., approaches based on acoustics, inspired by Tara Oceans or by landscape ecology, which have the potential to support and expand ecosystem modeling and forecasting activities by bridging global and local observations.

Seasonal Predictability of Global and North American Coastal Sea Surface Temperature and Height Anomalies

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Coastal marine ecosystems are strongly impacted by changes in ocean circulation and stratification, which lead to the geographic redistribution of available nutrients and oxygen and, in turn, marine species (Capotondi, Jacox, et al, 2019;Doney et al, 2012). Therefore, skillful prediction of coastal ocean conditions is increasingly needed for marine resource management (Jacox et al, 2020).

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Globally Consistent Quantitative Observations of Planktonic Ecosystems

“…In order to be useful for marine plankton models targeted for biogeochemical and fisheries applications, observation development should provide robust, global information on major taxa (concentration as well as relevant rates), the size distribution of the major plankton groups, as well as the particle size distribution at a biologically relevant spatiotemporal resolution (Capotondi et al, 2019;. Imaging and other techniques detailed above provide such information even for the deep ocean based on data from in situ devices.…”

Predictable Variations of the Carbon Sinks and Atmospheric CO2Growth in a Multi‐Model Framework

“…These improved regions differ across the models and when assessing them versus the GCB estimates or the SOM-FFN ( Figure S3) and the reconstructions ( Figure S4), highlighting the importance of high-quality reference for skillful predictions of the ocean carbon sink. The emerging new observational products would provide future new opportunities for predictability studies focusing on the ocean and land biogeochemsitry (Capotondi et al, 2019;Wanninkhof et al, 2019). The air-sea CO 2 flux dynamics is regulated by the temporal gradient of surface ocean pCO 2 .…”