Back to the Future: How Paleoclimatic Data Can Increase Stakeholder Preparedness in a Warming World

Abstract:

In order to adequately meet the challenges of sustainable fishing in an anthropogenically changing climate, policymakers, industry, and other stakeholders need to be aware of the magnitude climatic change can have on ecosystems. Incorporating information from the paleoclimatic record (which represents known rather than predicted changes in climate) has the potential to complement information from climate models, and offer stakeholders a more realistic picture of what the future may hold for ecosystems. The North Atlantic Ocean is a region particularly suited to such an investigation, as it encompasses economically valuable fisheries, and is not coherently simulated by climate models. Moreover, paleoclimatic analogs for present and future warming of the North Atlantic differ significantly from climate model projections, suggesting that incorporating information from the paleoclimatic record may provide additional insights in climate effects on ecosystems. To that end we have created a suite of future North Atlantic Ocean scenarios using output from recent climate modeling experiments, as well as the PRISM group's Mid-Pliocene (~3ma) ocean reconstruction. We use these scenarios to drive a marine ecosystem model based to identify differences between the scenarios as the North Atlantic Ocean changes through time.