US GLOBEC PanRegional Synthesis: An Outsider's View

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US GLOBEC Pan-Regional SynthesisAn Outsider's
View

• Ken Denman
• Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
  AnalysisMeteorological Service of
  CanadaUniversity of Victoria
• Institute of Ocean Sciences-DFO, Sidney, BC
• Email ken.denman_at_ec.gc.ca

U. Victoria
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Outline of Talk

• GLOBEC Motivation and Hypotheses
• what about the 'GLOB' part? long term and large
  scale
• Where is US GLOBEC Today?
• mature regional studies and capabilities
• Key Questions and Approaches
• 'local insights' versus 'universal truths'?
• The State of Marine Ecosystem Modelling
• reuniting foodweb versus biogeochemical models
• A Look into the Future
• climate change and other human impacts
• thinking beyond funding

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Motivation for GLOBEC
There exist hemispheric, multidecadal changes
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A Closer Look

• Lack of synchronicity in anchovy cycles
• Negative correlation with Benguela systemin S.
  Atlantic Ocean

Plots like these for your study regions would be
a highly desirable but unattainable outcome of
the US GLOBEC program
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Working Hypothesis 1
We want to understand the systems we are studying
well enough to 'forecast' their future behavior

• Events such as the 'physteria hysteria' off the
  Carolinas, or Hurricane Katrina, capture all the
  news. Our society tends to react immediately and
  intensely to these events. But how can we respond
  (rather than react) as a scientific community so
  as to help minimize the likelihood/risk of
  occurrence and/or severity of such events in the
  future?
• These 'crises' our personal, institutional and
  funding horizons lead us to focus on shorter
  term, smaller scale, 'process-level' studies

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Working Hypothesis 2
When GLOBEC ends, it should be seen as having put
our Society in a better position to address
issues of Global Change

• Definition
• Global change Environmental change resulting
  from human activities and from climate change
  both natural and anthropogenic.

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Yet Much Environmental Change of Consequence
Occurs on ENSO to Century Timescales

• Statistical predictions will likely fail as the
  system moves beyond the ensemble of realizations
  on which the statistics were based.
• Forecasting these timescales results in the
  system 'losing its memory' of initial conditions
• We must assume future forcing conditions
• Parameters must be formulated to adapt as the
  ocean environment changes

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Yet Much Environmental Change of Consequence
Occurs on ENSO to Century Timescales

• Statistical predictions will likely fail as the
  system moves beyond the ensemble of realizations
  on which the statistics were based.
• Forecasting these timescales results in the
  system 'losing its memory' of initial conditions
• We must assume future forcing conditions
• Parameters must be formulated to adapt as the
  ocean environment changes

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Where is US GLOBEC Today?

• You have completed intensive field programs on
  Georges Bank, in the Pacific Northwest/Alaska,
  in the Southern Ocean
• they combine submesoscale projects with
  'monitoring' on seasonal to interannual scales
• you have developed advanced sampling technology
  detailed mechanistic spatially-resolved coupled
  physical-biological models to capture and
  integrate the understanding gained from the field
  programs.
• You are about to enter into your 'Synthesis'
  phase and need a set of criteria to focus calls
  for proposals and eventually the reviewing of the
  proposals.
• You want to leave a LEGACY

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Key Questions and Approaches
1. Which scientific advances made by US GLOBEC
have been 'local insights' and which ones are
'universal truths'?

• Can we learn from studies 'Contrasting' the
  different regions studied?
• physically-controlled vs top-down predator
  controlled?
• dominated by event-scale phenomena, versus
  seasonal and longer scales?
• systems that 'erase the past' and reset each year
  (or after each 'event', e.g. El Niño, 'regime
  shift', etc.), versus those that integrate over
  multiple years and have 'memory'?

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Key Questions and Approaches
2. How much of the detail built into the
regional models is 'Portable'?

• Portability Index PI
• where J(Ri) is the cost function of fitting to
  region Ri J(Rj // Ri) is the cost of fitting to
  Rj after optimizing on Ri
• AS Arabian Sea EP Equatorial Pacific
• Friedrichs, M. A. M, J. Dusenberry, L. Anderson,
  R. Armstrong, F. Chai, J. Christian, S. Doney, J.
  Dunne, M. Fujii, R. Hood, D. McGillicuddy, K.
  Moore, M. Schartau, Y. Spitz, and J. Wiggert,
  2006. Assessment of skill and portability in
  regional marine biogeochemical models the role
  of multiple plankton groups. J. Geophys. Res.,
  submitted July 2006

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Model Intercomparisons and 'Portability'

• Models with multiple Phytoplankton classes (rhs)
  perform better than 1P models when applied to
  different regions (bottom panels)
• Simple models perform almost as well as complex
  models in 'local optimization' (panel b)
• Friedrichs et al, submitted

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Model Intercomparisons and 'Portability'

• EqPacChlorophyll constraint accounts for
  largest cost
• Arabian Sea (not shown)Productivity constraint
  more important
• Complex Models- different models with similar
  cost may have very different internal flows-
  need more observations of 'internal' variables
  to constrain flows

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Portability Index
OOPS!Assimilating zooplankton data ? Higher Cost
Lower Portability WHY??

• Lower Cost ? Higher Portability

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3. Which functional representations in our models
are or can be formulated so that they vary with a
changing climate? (Do our approaches allow for
'emergent'? properties?)

• Consider the Chlorophyll Carbon ratio ? for
  example
• our models are expressed in terms of C or N yet
  we estimate phytoplankton biomass from
  Chlorophyll, and Chlorophyll captures PAR, the
  light used in photosynthesis
• we obtain variable ? based on the equation for
  'balanced' ChlC of Geider et al. 1996, 1997,
  and
• observations/analyses from OSP during SUPER
  (Booth et al, 1993) our own during 1998-2000
  (Peña Varela, in prep.) ? tedious
• our 'balanced' ? is based on the previous 24h PAR
  (Jim Christian)

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CChl ( 1/? ) from OSP and Shelf Edge
First cruise?? ? - Winter low, no gradient
Summer 40 - 100
Peña Varela, submitted
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CChl Ratio for Variable PAR at OSP

• Smooth black line is

• Red line is 'balanced' 1/?for PARt-1 averaged
  over the upper 30 m
• Range 25 120 gC/gChl
• BUT Chl changes little at OSP?

• smooth black line is average daily PAR at OSP
• mid-summer clear sky PAR 150 W m-2

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Current State of Marine Ecosystem Modeling

• Over the last decade, marine ecosystem model
  development has diverged into several lines of
  more or less independent activity. These include
  
• upper food web models incorporating
  individual-based models (IBMs) and life history
  models of herbivores and harvestable marine
  resources
• trophic models spanning many trophic levels but
  focusing on harvestable marine resources
• biogeochemical models coupled to physical climate
  models.

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End-to-End Ecosystem Modeling 'E2E'

• International GLOBEC/ IMBER has organized an
  End-to-End Ecosystem Task Team (e2e), whose goal
  is
• to guide the development of a full ecosystem
  approach that links all components of the food
  web with comprehensive climate models to explore
  the impacts and feedbacks between global change
  (in its broadest sense) and marine food webs.
• (North American members Dave Karl Ken Denman).

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US GLOBEC Synthesis could have a goal to develop
an ecosystem model that would work equally well
(according to some 'cost function') in all your
regional study areas, embedded in the same
(ROMS?) circulation model.

• Need better metrics of uncertainty
• Need ensemble projections
• give relative probability of different outcomes
• evaluate risk of the different outcomes
• Coupling the large scales to the small scales,
  i.e. downscaling

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A Look into the Future Global warming is here to
stay

• Annual rates of emissions of CO2 are increasing,
  and will continue to do so for the foreseeable
  future (at least 30 years, due to coal generation
  plants) see next 2 slides
• Polluting aerosols will be tackled and reduced
  due their short atmospheric lifetimes and to the
  more immediate threat to human health which
  will lead to an increase in the rate of warming
  (due to current cooling effect of aerosols)
• All C4MIP coupled carbon-climate models show a
  positive feedback to climate, i.e. coupled models
  all sequester less CO2 to land and oceans than
  uncoupled (Friedlingstein et al., 2006, J.
  Climate.)

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Stabilizing Concentrations Requires Large
Decrease in Emissions from Y 2000 Level
Stabilizing Concentrations at 550 ppm requires
Decreasing CO2 Emissions by 75 from present
levels
IPCC TAR, 2001
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What Next? Rise in Coal-Fired Plants vs. Carbon
Capture and Storage Capability
IEA estimates they will release 140 GtCcf. 165
GtCanthro. left in atmosphere in 1995
About 50 will remain in atmosphere (based on
last 50 years) i.e. equivalent to an increase in
atmospheric CO2 of 33 ppm

• Schiermeier, Q., News feature, Nature 442, 10
  Aug. 2006.

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What Kind of Future?

• Stabilizing CO2 levels at 550 ppm by 2100 ('2 x
  CO2') is probably not attainable through
  controlling emissions.
• Stabilizing CO2 around 700-750 ppm is more likely
• OR ? ?
• We need to consider mitigation measures,e.g.
  proposal to inject sulphates into the
  stratosphere, Paul Crutzen, 2006, Climatic
  Change

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The Ocean Surface pH is DecreasingHow will that
affect fisheries ecosystems?
prepared by Arne Körtzinger (IFM,Kiel) for the
IMBER Science Plan on the basis of WOCE data
Schlitzer, 2000
http//ioc.unesco.org/iocweb/co2panel/Publications
.htm
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The Coastal Ocean More Hypoxia Events?

• Dead zone off Newport, Oregon 2002,04,06

www.piscoweb.org PISCO at OSU
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Hypoxia Events Are They Increasing?

• What are the causes?
• natural?
• climate change?
• other human activities?
• Can we predict them?

Grantham et al., 2004. Nature, 429, 749-753
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Our Future?

• Our community doing 'basic' science will be
  expected to spend more effort addressing impacts
  ( risk analysis) adaptation mitigation
  measures.
• That requires improved projections of our future
  climate and ocean, and inclusion of more
  'impacts' directly into our models