Climatological trends in the physical environment

Oceans 2025 Theme 6: Science for Sustainable Marine Resources

To achieve an 'ecosystems approach' for marine resource management, we need to disentangle human impacts from natural variability, over a range of temporal and spatial scales. This Theme combines physical modelling and trophic dynamics to re-assess past changes in marine ecosystems and predict their future development. It includes consideration of the ecological impacts of renewable energy schemes, and factors affecting the introduction and spread of non-native species. POL's contribution is in the analysis of the outputs of coupled and uncoupled physical and ecosystem models over decadal time scales and their interpretation for other users of model output in the other marine centres, specifically the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the Marine Biological Association who are also directly involved in this theme.

 Human exploitation of the seas, together with environmental change, is affecting marine ecosystems at a pace that is challenging our ability to provide innovative, effective and adaptive scientific solutions 
Dr Judith Wolf
Physical Oceanographer

Marine ecosystems supply critical goods (e.g. food, renewable energy, transport) and crucial but less tangible services (e.g. climate regulation, waste assimilation) to society. Each use we make of the sea has important consequences for the ecosystem, ranging from the direct and indirect effects of fishing on habitats and populations to the spreading of non-indigenous species by ballast waters, and to noise pollution from both civilian and military sources.

Human exploitation of the seas, together with environmental change, is affecting marine ecosystems at a pace that is challenging our ability to provide innovative, effective and adaptive scientific solutions. As a result, the sustainability of the marine ecosystem is in question. Thus, there is a pressing need for knowledge to underpin sustainable management of marine ecosystems for stewardship of our seas. POL will use the output of model hindcasts and forecasts to quantify (within the limits of model uncertainty) the changes which have occurred over the last 50 years and estimate those likely to occur over the next 50 years, to provide the information needed for marine management.

POL's work package within this Research Unit is WP6.1: Decadal variability of the northwest European shelf seas". A related CR project is: Tapping the Tidal Power Potential of the Eastern Irish Sea. The model runs are being carried out under Theme 9: Next Generation Ocean Prediction Systems, specifically WP9.4: Multi-decadal simulations. Another related project is the Tyndall Wave Climate Modelling project.