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Arctic and Nordic Seas
(Marcin Weslawski) |
EUR-OCEANS will work on seven such systems :
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Within this system, the interaction of warm Atlantic water with the cold Arctic influences sea-ice dynamics and deepwater formation - an important mechanism for distributing heat from low to high latitudes as well as the sequestration of atmospheric CO2 to the oceans interior.
 In addition, the Arctic and Nordic Seas sustain large stocks of birds, sea mammals and commercially important fish species like herring and cod. Even small temperature changes can have a pronounced influence on fish growth, reproduction and recruitment. This strong link to climate has already resulted in distinctive inter-annual to decadal scale oscillations on harvestable fish stocks.
EUR-OCEANS aims to use this system’s wealth of instrumental records on marine climate and fish stocks as a good platform for the development of computer models to better understand the impacts of human-induced climate change on this fragile ecosystem.
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The Arctic and the Nordic Seas are more susceptible to global climate change than other systems with an expected 80% reduction in summer sea-ice by the end of this century. The combination of such a sensitive region with its importance on climate control and its diverse and commercially important ecosystem makes the Arctic and Nordic Seas very distinctive from the other six regional EUR-OCEANS systems.