U. S. GLOBEC Scientific Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

Mesa Lab-Damon Room

National Center for Atmospheric Research

Boulder, CO

4-5 November 2004

Thursday November 4, 2004

Members in attendance were Dale Haidvogel (Rutgers), Michael Alexander (NOAA-CIRES), Nick Bond (NOAA), Ric Brodeur (NOAA/NMSF/NWFSC), Jennifer Burns (UA Anchorage), Kendra Daly (USF), Jonathan Hare (NOAA), Dennis McGillicuddy (WHOI), Arthur Miller (Scripps), David Mountain (NMSF/NOAA), Steven Murawski(NMSF/NOAA), Michael Fogarty (NOAA/NMFS), Thomas (Zack) Powell (UC Berkeley), Francisco Werner (UNC), and Peter Wiebe (WHOI); and Eileen Hofmann (ODU) via conference call.

Guests in attendance included Hal Batchelder (OSU), Madeline Gazzale (Rutgers), Linda Lagle (WHOI), Phil Taylor (NSF), Robin Smythe (NSF), Beth Turner (NOAA), David Robertson (Rutgers).

Members not in attendance were David Ainley (H.T. Harvey), Yochanan Kushnir (Lamont), Mark Ohman (Scripps), Susanne Strom (WWU), Ted Strub (OSU).

Dale Haidvogel, Chairperson of the SSC, called the meeting to order at 0845 hours.  Following a brief welcome and introduction of the SSC members, an overview of the meeting’s agenda was presented.  It was noted that there are three science seminars scheduled during this SSC Meeting.  The minutes of the May 2004 SSC Meeting were presented and reviewed.  Several comments were made and corrections were noted.  The minutes were approved.  Once the corrections are made the minutes will be posted on the GLOBEC website.

     Georges Bank

     Peter Wiebe presented an update of the phase IV Synthesis Activities for Georges Bank.  He started with a review of the timeline.  The most relevant part of this timeline in terms of his discussion is the latter part of 2004 going into 2005.  Since the last SSC meeting the Georges Bank PI Meeting took place and also the ICES Meeting in May which many of the Georges Bank PI’s attended.  Peter noted that he hoped that the AO would come out in the next few months.  

There are five funded projects for the U. S. GLOBEC Northwest Atlantic Georges Bank Program.  They are:  1) The Physical Oceanography of Georges Bank and Its Impact on Biology; 2) Zooplankton Population Dynamics on Georges Bank: Model and Data Synthesis; 3) Tidal Front Mixing and Exchange on Georges Bank: Controls on the Production of Phytoplankton, Zooplankton and Larval Fishes; 4) Patterns of Energy Flow and Utilization on Georges Bank; 5) Integration and Synthesis of Georges Bank Broad-Scale Survey Results.  A sixth funded project entitled Phase IV Data Synthesis Scientific Investigators’ Symposia was noted.  The latter is support for the meetings and other activities.

The first three projects mentioned above use the same central modeler who has taken the lead on developing FVCOM modeling in various combinations coupled with physical biological models in the laboratory.

Peter noted that a totally different approach to the modeling and understanding of the dynamics on Georges Bank is being performed by the group of PI’s that are involved with the Patterns of Energy Flow and Utilization Program.  They are looking at a much longer time frame from approximately the sixties up through the present.  They are looking at the energy flow and the food chain dynamics in different decadal stanzas.

The group Peter is involved with is in the process of taking the data sets that have been collected on the broad-scale cruises and are trying to synthesize the pattern of distribution and abundance of key species, and all the physical parameters.

Peter went on to mention that there were eleven papers presented by Georges Bank Program Investigators at the 2004 ICES Annual Science Meeting in Vigo, Spain. 

The main activity for Georges Bank for the past six months has been the U. S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Science Meeting that was held at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island from June 21-25, 2004.  The goal of this meeting was to foster integration and synthesis of the results that the individual Phase IV GLOBEC Georges Bank project investigators are learning and producing.  Each day started with the five individual project leaders providing some insight to the participants as to what they should except to get out of the meeting.  There were poster sessions in the afternoon.  A total of 25 presentations (9 talks and 16 posters) were made during the workshop.  Peter gave a general review of each day and highlighted the key points of the program and presentations that were presented.  One in particular was the talk Beth Turner (NOAA) gave entitled “GLOBEC Synthesis from a Program Manager’s Perspective.”  She talked about what the funding agencies expect PI’s to produce and provide the agencies with in terms of information.  Peter noted that it was a very good hard-hitting presentation stating exactly what the program managers expect. 

Other presentations included:

1.      North Atlantic Oscillation and GoM Nutrient Structure (Charlie Flagg).

2.      NAO II: The Georges Bank Ecosystem: Predicting the Crash of 1999? (Chuck Greene).

3.      The Status of New England Fisheries (Steve Murawski).

4.      CoML, GoMOOS, IOOS, RARGOM: Next Steps Towards Data Integration and Science for the Gulf of Maine Area (Lew Incze).

5.      Internannual Variability of the Circulation in the Georges Bank/Gulf of Maine Region (Chen).

6.      Synthesis in US GLOBEC (Fogarty).

7.      A discussion led by J. Runge on how to integrate the various modeling approaches that are now being pursued in this phase of the synthesis to get to a mechanistic ecosystem understanding.

8.      EasyKrig 3.0: A Statistical Software Package for Interpolation and Extrapolation of 3D Data (Dezhang Chu).

Additional details regarding these presentations and the meeting in general are on the website at http://globec.whoi.edu/globec-dir/phase4doc/simeeting2004/report.shtml.

Peter went on to discuss the list of tasks he received from the lead PI’s regarding the work that their groups will be handling beyond the PI Meeting.  These PI Activities include:

•         Complete LT moored array Tech Report (Irish, Caruso, Beardsley)

•         Write up analysis of 1999 TMF ADCP array (Lerczak, Schlitz)

•         Complete FVCOM simulations of Houghton 1999 tracer release experiments on a) SF and (b) NF (Chen, Houghton, Beardsley,….)

•         Complete description of 1999 EF moored data, compare observed low-frequency (1.5-3 day) barotropic oscillations with Brink theory and 1999 FVCOM data, drifters,….(Beardsley, Flagg, Limeburner, Chen)

•         Analyze and describe 1994-1999 LT SF moored data, with focus on basic T,S,D,u,p variability, seasonal cycle, inter-annual variability in data, shelf/slope frontal intrusions, Scotian Shelf water cross-overs, etc. (Brink, Beardsley)

•         Start FVCOM process study of stability of NF frontal jet (Brink, Pringle, Chen)

•         Describe Ledwell 1999 tracer release data (Ledwell,Churchill) [Include VPR data?]

•         Conduct FVCOM simulations for Ledwell 1999 SF pycnocline tracer release results (Chen, Churchill,.. )

•         Investigate relationships between GB/GoM water masses and properties with upstream sources (Scotian shelf, St. Lawrence, Labrador shelf, NWA), larger scale indices (e.g., NAO) using all available data (Flagg, Smith (BIO), Mountain)

•         Investigate relationships between GB/GoM SST and larger scale SST using 1985-1999 SST dataset (Brunner, Bisagni)

•         Get and setup SMAST supercomputer (Chen, Cowles) and WHOI minicomputer (Sepulveda, Churchill)

•         Get complete 1999 FVCOM simulation data from Alaska computer, and setup dedicated server to host complete 1995 and 1999 FVCOM output (Chen)

•         Compare FVCOM 1995 and 1999 simulations, with focus on (a) development of stratification, (b) wind-driven flow, (c) Lagrangian transport from Scotian shelf and GoM to GB, (d) differences between years (Chen, Beardsley, Flagg, Limeburner). 

•         Run MM5/FVCOM for 1998, 1997, and 1996 and serve results (Chen)

The FVCOM model has been in development for several years.  It is now to the point were it is effectively capturing the essence of the flow fields and they can input the meteorological driving forces.  FVCOM is now being used for data exploration and to do experiments in the model framework.

Peter then went on to talk about the Zooplankton Population Dynamics on Georges Bank:  Model and Data Synthesis-Activities. This group is taking the FVCOM and integrating the biology to do the population dynamics.  They are doing detailed exploration of the transport pathways to see how it influences behavior.  They are looking at ways to develop an offline code for tracers so they can take the physics and then incorporate the biology and then run the system.  They are also taking the ecosystem models and are incorporating them into the FVCOM so they can run a full annual cycle.  There is also further development and constraint of an IBM model.  They are also looking into modeling the diapause behavior.  The ecosystem model is being coupled with the IBM model.  Peter then showed a video clip showing a FVCOM simulation. 

The Tidal Front Mixing and Exchange on Georges Bank group are looking at exchange across the two major fronts, southern flank and northern flank.  They, too, are using FVCOM and coupled physical-biological models.  They are looking at fish larvae and are trying to simulate how the target cod and haddock species are able to grow and survive.  There is a conceptual model being developed that relates where the fish spawn to year class strength on the bank.

The Patterns of Energy Flow and Utilization on Georges Bank group activities include the final production estimates at all trophic levels including estimates of new primary production.  They are trying to determine the most appropriate objective function for network analysis.  They are also refining the estimates of new primary production required to sustain upper trophic level production. They are learning that the typical 10 percent efficiency between trophic levels does not work here.  The efficiencies have to be higher in order to satisfy the constraints based on what you see for biomass and what you assume for the actual rate process measurements.  They are looking to join upper and lower trophic level food webs in the integrated analysis.  Network models for decadal time stanzas will be constructed.  They will also develop dynamic models for selected portions of food web with explicit consideration of environmental forcing.

Mike Fogarty elaborated on some of the points that Peter made.  Mike stated that the heart of the issue is that all of the estimates that had previously been worked on for the bank had been largely driven by C14 measurements.  What they have come to realizes is that on the central crest of the bank which had traditionally shown high levels of production with C14 was largely recycled production once the system is fully stratified.  This is not really production that would be available on a sustained basis to flow into the upper trophic levels.  Therefore, we need to account for the useable primary production on the bank.  Which when you try to get the F ratios for this system in the central crest of the bank the ratio of new to total production you come down with a much lower level of primary production overall on the bank.  There is a secondary issue of import and export terms because it is not a closed system.  Calanus come onto the bank on an annual basis.   They are coming out of diapause in the deep basin of the gulf and coming on to the bank as adults.  How you account for this element of import on to the bank is an important issue.  At the next trophic level up there is the issue of a large biomass of fish that move through seasonally and so you have to account for their impacts on the system and the fact that they are not deriving all their energy from Georges Bank alone.

Peter then pointed out that most of the work has been done without thinking much about the environment as being a forcing function.  That is now coming into the mix with their modeling efforts.  

He then noted the present broad-scale project activities which include:

•         Broad-scale Atlas:  In latter stages of assembling a broad-scale Atlas along the lines of the recently published CPR Atlas of distributions of plankton across NATL by SAPHOS.

•         Cod and haddock egg, larval growth, and mortality data in manuscript for DSRII (Mountain, Green, Sibunka, and Johnson).

•         A technology report will be produced for the eggs collected during GLOBEC years. This will include the eggs and larvae collected by station and associated figures (Sibunka et al).

•         Finish 98 Pseudocalanus data and finish the manuscript about 1999 data for DSRII (Bucklin).

•         Analyze ECOMON samples for Pseudocalanus species for 2001 (Green & Bucklin).

•         Manuscript Reproductive rates of Calanus bankwide (Runge)

•         Manuscript on all process egg production rate data for DSRII (Runge)

•         GoM fall Calanus distribution data for DSRII (Wiebe et al)

•         Summation of all predation rate data and equations used to compute predation by the various invertebrate predator groups in manuscript and atlas of Predation bank-wide impacts for DSRII (Madin et al).

•         Hydroid/turbulence effects manuscript (Madin et al); Pleurobrachia distribution on the bank - manuscript submitted (Madin et al).

•         Comparison of broad-scale mortality rates with predation rates and predators (Ohman, Madin, Runge Durbin et al).

•         Broad-scale patterns of zooplankton biomass and acoustics for the Bank (Wiebe, Green, and others).

•         Hydrography/zooplankton distribution analysis (Ashjian et al.).

•         More work on the chronology.

Peter went on to discuss the different parameters that are being gridded.  These include bathymetry, temperature, salinity, density, chlorophyll (algorithms), fluorescence, nutrients, carbon (for 1999 only), currents (ADCP, Drogues), backscattering (BioS and

HTI, ADCP), satellite data (AVHRR, SeaWifs, winds), meteorological data, zooplankton biomass, (Integrated –bongos and stratified 335 um MOCNESS), species counts (e.g. Calanus finmarchicus –by stage, Pseudocalanus spp - by stage including cod, haddock, other invertebrates, predators (Invert (Madin/Bollens, Vert [NMFS-COP]) and derived rates such as productivity, copepod egg production, and mortality.  Peter noted that by the time you get to species counts by stage and by cruise you have a lot of gridded data sets, upwards of a thousand or more. There are approximately 2385 points in each grid. 

He then showed an example of the gridded data for density stratification on the bank for each month and year that they were out there.  There are some significant differences in the stratification where it occurs first and how it develops. He also showed a slide depicting the analysis of the recruitment of cod and haddock on the bank for five years.  Recruits from the fishery assessment cruises for a given year verses larve that are fifteen days old.  The estimate of the larve that are fifteen days old comes out of an analysis of the eggs and the mortality rates of the larval stages up to the time that they are fifteen days old.  There is a relationship between larval abundance on the bank and the recruit per ten thousand larve.  Thus, with fewer larve on the bank you have higher recruitment; with more larve you have the higher survivorship.     

Peter then moved on to discuss what’s next for Georges Bank PIs.  The DSR-II Volume 3 is started.  The call for papers has gone out.  A few titles for papers have been received but, no actual manuscripts as of yet.  A 3-day workshop with a day each to focus on Calanus, Pseudocalanus, and Cod/Haddock will beheld at UNH.  Another meeting that focuses on long temporal/spatial scales of variability that impact the GoM and Georges Bank ecosystem will take place.  The AO Phase 4.2 will go out in December or January with proposals due in February of 2005.  An EU/NA Atlantic Basin-scale Workshop will be held in Iceland in March 2005.  There will be an ASLO June Meeting in Santiago, Spain with abstracts due in February.  Peter stressed  that the Georges Bank PIs should attend the ICES meeting which will be in Aberdeen, Scotland in September of 2005.

The last item Peter spoke about was the Basin-scale Analysis, Synthesis, and Integration (BASIN) of Oceanographic and Climate-Related Processes and the Dynamics of Plankton and Fish Populations in the North Atlantic Ocean workshop that will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland from March 11-15, 2005.  This workshop is a cooperative project that involves individuals from European and North American countries.  It has been funded in part by the EU and by NSF. 

The workshop goals are to plan for synthesis of biological and physical data sets; identify primary drivers of basin-wide population dynamics of zooplankton and fish; create an action plan for development of basin-scale coupled biological/physical and ecosystem models for the North Atlantic, including the shelf seas; and encourage and facilitate trans-Atlantic exchange, collaboration, and team building between scientific investigators and ecosystem/fisheries managers.

The BASIN Workshop Steering Committee includes Peter Wiebe – USA, Roger Harris - UK, Olafur Astthorsson – Iceland, Cisco Werner – USA, Mike St. John – Germany, Dale Haidvogel – USA, Francios Carlotti – France, and Brad DeYoung – Canada. 

Invitations were sent out in mid-October. The web site http://globec.whoi.edu/basin/

was created for background documents and other workshop related information.  A draft agenda has been prepared and will be sent to attendees.  Next steps are to finalize participants list, develop list of session leaders and rapporteurs, and prepare outlines of product documents. 

There were questions raised that dealt with the timing of the AO versus the Basin Workshop.  A discussion ensued regarding the AO.  It was pointed out that there seems to be a mismatch in the AO between the physical oceanographic activities and the directions set up for the basin workshop.  There is no physical oceanographic component presently planned or worked on that links the activities in the GOM region to the larger circulation models on the shelf.  The importance of both activities was stressed.  It was also pointed out that it is important that GLOBEC as a program reach out to other programs in physical oceanography that are dealing with basin-to-global scale circulation and transport.    A narrative report of the workshop can be produced right away, but the results from the workshop, white papers, will take longer to produce.    Phil Taylor of NSF noted that the SSC needs to highlight the critical things that need to be done and put these in the AO.  The committee has to prioritize its activities.  The community, program officers, the panelists-reviewers need to have a sense of what the SSC thinks is needed in order to get to where they want to go.  The timing is critical for all of this.  There was much discussion concerning the present AO.  If the AO needs to be change it has to be changed now.  (Discussion continues on page 15.)

     Southern Ocean GLOBEC

     Eileen Hoffman provided an update of the Southern Ocean GLOBEC via conference call. She reminded everyone that the primary objective of SO GLOBEC is to understand the physical and biological factors that contribute to enhanced Antarctic krill growth, reproduction, recruitment and survivorship throughout the year.  There is a large focus on higher trophic level predators and competitors of Antarctic krill, such as seal, penguins, whales, fish, seabirds and other zooplankton.  Southern Ocean also has strong linkage to climate and close coupling between trophic levels. 

SO GLOBEC has field programs in the UK, Germany, Korea, US, and Austrialia.    The German program is still on going.  There was a series of cruises in the Lazarev Sea and there will be more cruises in 2005, 2006 and 2007.  The US part of the field work is finished for now.  Eileen showed a map of the area that has field programs and made note of a large area in the Pacific sector that does not have any real programs.

There was an open science meeting held in Bremen, Germany in July of 2004.  There was a session on Southern Ocean Marine Ecosystems.  There were about 20 oral presentations and 14 poster presentations many of which were SO GLOBEC related.  The session was very successful and made the broader community aware of what is going on in SO GLOBEC.

The first SO GLOBEC Deep-Sea Research Special Volume is in the final stages.  There are 22 manuscripts and one overview article.  As of last week all the page proofs have been returned to the publisher.  The Publication is “any minute now” and should have a 2004 publication date on it.  The co-editors are Hofmann, Wiebe, Costa and Torres.

A colorful cover image that was designed by Dan Costa was displayed.  The purpose of the cover is to convey the various components of the program and the various activities.

At the last SSC meeting it was reported that an AO had been written for Synthesis and Modeling Activities for SO GLOBEC and that is was submitted to NSF.  Within the last week the synthesis and modeling RFP was approved by NSF.  It should be issued shortly.  Proposals will be due in early 2005 most likely in February.  NSF is viewing this synthesis and modeling AO as a contribution from the US Antarctic Program to the international polar year. Funding should start in mid-2005. 

Eileen then spoke about the international side of SO GLOBEC.  A Memorandum of Understanding between SO GLOBEC and SCAR has been signed within the last month.  This was done through the International GLOBEC planning office.  What this means is that SCAR is now an official partner in SO GLOBEC activities.  The practical implication is that SCAR will provide a person(s) for planning of future Southern Ocean activities, co-convene meeting/workshops, and co-sponsor activities.

Follow-on activities for SO GLOBEC include ICCED – Integrated analysis of Circumpolar Climate interactions and Ecosystem Dynamics in the Southern Ocean.

ICCED is being put forward as a component of the joint initiative between the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program and the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research entitled IMBER and International GLOBEC.    This program will take on components of SO GLOBEC, as well as incorporating ideas from IMBER which is focused on how biogeochemical feedbacks to the marine food web.  The intent of the ICCED program was to be circumpolar, interdisciplinary approach to understand climate interactions in the SO and implications for ecosystem function and feedbacks to biogeochemical cycles and to implement circumpolar instrumentation and field studies.  The program will also extend and further develop circulation, ecosystem, and biogeochemical models and will stimulate capacity building in SO community.  Some of the modeling work with ICCED is already under way.  Potentially some of the proposals that will go in for the SO GLOBEC AO would in fact incorporate modeling studies to provide a basis for future programs. 

There have been planning activities going on for this program.  The first meeting for planning was at the International GLOBEC Open Science Meeting in October 2002.  It was discussed with International GLOBEC SSC at IGBP Congress, June 2003.  A meeting with a small organizing group met in July 2003 in London.  The most recent activity was a small meeting at SCAR OSM in July 2004.  Resulting from this meeting a small workshop is being planned for May 2005. The likely venue is the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England.  The objectives of this workshop would be to 1) coordinate the many activities planned for the Southern Ocean in the next ten years, and 2) develop a science plan for ICCED. 

Eileen pointed out that in the SO community there are several plans going forward.  One is going forward through the Euro Oceans to have a coordinating European effort in the SO.  There is also activity through the Census of Marine Life Program to set up lines around the Antarctic that will be permanent sampling lines that will be occupied for a number of years.  Australia and Germany have committed to setting up lines and other lines are proposed. The US is looking in to having a line.  

In terms of upcoming activities there is going to be a joint SCAR-SCOR Southern Ocean session at the IAG/IAPSO/IABO Joint Assembly in Cairns, Australia on the 22-26 August 2005.  The session will be entitled “Southern Ocean Circulation and Marine Life (PBA1)”. The session just accepted and information will be forthcoming on session and meeting details. Abstracts will be due 29 April 2005.  The thought was that this meeting will bring together the SO community and people from the Census of Marine Life Program.  This would be a venue for them to sit down and see what they are doing so they can put this information into the planning for the future of SO activities. 

Eileen concluded her presentation with beautiful slides of a moonrise and a sunrise.

     Northeast Pacific Program

     Hal Batchelder presented highlights the Northeast Pacific Program.  There is a GLOBEC NEP Special Issue of DSR II which is expected to be the first Issue of 2005.  It is entitled US GLOBEC Biological and Physical Studies of Plankton, Fish, and Higher Trophic Level Production, Distribution, and Variability in the Northeast Pacific.  The guest editors for this special volume are Batchelder, Lessard, Strub and Weingartner. 

The proposed cover illustration which shows both ship board activities in the GOA and drifter data was shown.  There will be 17 papers in this special volume.  This is the second NEP special issue.

The second thing he spoke about was the NEP participation in various national and international meetings.  The most important of these was the PICES Meeting in Hawaii.  There was a Climate Change and Carrying Capacity (CCCC) Topic Session (S9) entitled “The Impacts of Large-Scale Climate Change on North Pacific Marine Ecosystems.”  It was a day and a half of oral presentations with a poster session.  There were twenty-five oral presentations in the session, 8 of which were from the US GLOBEC NEP Program.  There were 19 posters, 11 of which were also from the US GLOBEC NEP Program.  There were also 8 other oral presentations and 1 poster in other sessions.  The US GLOBEC NEP Program was well represented at this meeting.  Several weeks before that in September there was the Easter Pacific Ocean Conferences (EPOC) 2004 Meeting in Vancouver Island which was also well attended by NEP investigators.

In the California Current Synthesis (CCS) there were 14 proposals received to the call for proposals that had a submission date of April 15 of last year.  Five have been declined outright and nine are still on the table for support, depending on availability of funds.  This CCS AO was soliciting synthesis proposals for up to three years duration.  Three years was chosen because it was anticipated that early next year there would be a target date for the GOA which is offset by a year in most of their field work from the CCS program.

The unofficial version of the CGOA Synthesis AO was handed out.  The AO is under review by agencies and has a target date in March-April 2005.  One of the objectives of this AO is to do some of the synthesis of the GOA data sets that have been collected and to perhaps broaden the data sets that are examined to outside of those that are collect by GLOBEC.  The second is to get the CCS and the GOA programs in sequence.  This announcement is soliciting proposals for only two years not three years.  The CGOA and the CCS would then end around the same time.  This should put the NEP program in synchrony so that the larger scale synthesis activities that have a broader range throughout GLOBEC programs can take place.  (Discussion continues on page 38.)

A substantial effort has been put forth by Hal in getting CCS data sets online this past year.  Much progress has been made in getting data online.  Less emphasis was placed on getting CGOA data online; therefore less progress was made.  The CGOA data will be an emphasis for the next 6 months. 

Other activities for the NEP will include the CCS SI Meeting in Corvallis, OR in November, 2004.  A significant element of this meeting will be the development of lists which contain science research topics, data available dates, and papers that will be forthcoming, to name a few.  There will also be posters and invited presenters who will summarize the major component issues of the program.   The poster sessions will highlight the details.  Also, all of the synthesis teams that still have proposals on the table have been asked to give a preview of what they propose to do so linkages can be made to cross synthesis projects. 

The CGOA SI Meeting that will be held in Seattle, WA in late January early February will have similar activities.  Discussions will take place at this meeting to build teams to propose synthesis activities in response to the AO which should be out by the time of the
meeting.  If the AO is not out then a draft AO will be made available. 

Looking further out and a little more broadly, the Scientific Community on Oceanic Research (SCOR) recently has proposed to have a working group on Comparative Studies of Marine Zooplankton Populations.  It was approved and this working group will start to look at a global scale comparison of zooplankton population.  Each working group has approximately ten members and has a working lifetime of three years.  This proposal was a development from a ZP Production Symposium workshop that was held in Gijon in May of last year.    

PICES and GLOBEC International are co-sponsoring a Symposium on “Climate Variability and Ecosystem Impacts on the North Pacific:  A Basin-Scale Synthesis” in April of 2006 at the East-West Conference Center in Honolulu, HI.  Invited will be papers that provide interdisciplinary or multi-regional comparisons on the following themes: 

1)      Regime Shifts esp., examination of the ocean and ecosystem responses to known strong, infrequent changes in the North Pacific, such as those of 1977, 1989, and 1998.

2)      Ecosystem Productivity and Structural Responses to Physical Forcing with an emphasis on interannual (El Niño-La Niña), seasonal and event time scales

3)      Pan-Pacific Comparisons of similar species or processes from multiple coastal ecosystems and of open ocean-coastal linkages and climate connections.

Symposium will be a combination of plenary oral sessions and poster sessions each day.  Symposium proceedings will be published in a refereed journal still to be determined.  Papers for publication must be submitted at the symposium. This is viewed as a two part synthesis activity.  The first part was the CCCC’s session that occurred within the annual PICES meeting several weeks ago.  The data sets were reviewed to see what has been happening in the regions.  The second part aims at building linkages or collaborations between people that showed similar types of observations in different regions.  We’re trying to get them to think more broadly than their own regions.  This is a multistage process.

Hal then move on to the science aspect of his talk.  He started with a slide of the seasonality of the GOA continental flow fields.  In the summer there is a slight inflow at depth and perhaps some upwelling.  It is very weak if it is there, but it is not there every year.  In the winter there is a strong downwelling situation.  It stratifies the water column horizontally.  There is a lot of fresh water on the inshore.  So the inner shelf, the Alaska Coastal Current is very fresh and rapidly moving along shore.  There is an Alaskan stream off shore which is driven by the large scale basin wind fields and is also moving parallel in direction. There is also a mid-shelf transition region that can vary quite a bit from year to year, month to month and week to week. It has a lot of eddy activity. 

One of the main issues in the GOA is that it is fairly productive in terms of a fishing resources region.  So the question arises, “if it is predominately a downwelling system where are the nutrients coming from that fuel the productivity that supports the higher trophic levels?”  This is one of the main questions that is being looked at by the GOA investigators. 

Hal then showed a figure of the seasonal cycle from March to December of nitrogen concentrations at different depths.  In the summer you get onshore flows which increase at depth, and perhaps at some biological significant production depths of nitrogen.  As it turns into winter you get vertical mixing and a lot of the nutrients get re-injected into the surface layers.  The light level is so low in the fall and winter that the primary producers cannot utilize it at that time.  For a major portion of the year light is limiting primary production on the Northern GOA shelf.

He then showed a slide depicting the cross-shelf gradients in nutrient utilization reflecting differences in phytoplankton communities.  There is some evidence that in the summer nitrite and silicate are starting to become limited on the inner shelf and not so much on the outer shelf.  On the outer shelf there was a fairly significant amount of iron in Prince William Sound and on the inner shelf.  As you proceed to the outer shelf the concentration goes down.  Further off shore is the HNLC region which does not have much productivity because there is not enough iron.  The argument has been made in the GOA that there is a fairly significant amount of iron input in the freshwater run off from Alaska that gets into the Alaska coastal current which is the near shore low salinity region.  Yet, there is not much nitrite there because the nitrite levels in the runoff are very low.  The inner shelf may be nitrite limited, but iron replete.  The offshore waters are the reverse.  The transition zone, the mixing region in between, is the region where a lot of the productivity can occur because it gets enough nitrogen and iron. 

There are cross-shelf differences in phytoplankton communities.  Large phytoplankton cells dominate the inner shelf while small phytoplankton cells dominate the outer shelf.  The mid-shelf is a transition zone.

Hal then jumped up several trophic levels and showed figures regarding the Marine Survival of Pink Salmon from Hatcheries in the Prince William Sound.  It was noted that the 2002 year had a high rate of survival.  One of the things that have been looked at is how the various habitats in the Northern Gulf of Alaska have been utilized by salmon.  The habitat has been characterized as Prince William Sound, on the shelf or then further offshore.  A distinction between the inner shelf and the middle shelf is not made; it is just the shelf at least for the presentation that was made.   The salmon are released from the hatcheries in May and stay in the Prince William Sound anywhere from a month to three months depending on conditions.  They eventually transition to the shelf and by the early to middle fall they start to move from the shelf.  During this time the salmon are not seen in the sampling, therefore it is assumed that they are moving deeper offshore and out of the sampling area. 

Pink salmon move sequentially through these regions during their first summer.  The food availability in each of the above regions is critical in determining their growth.  Shelf fish were bigger in 2002 and 2003 while ACC fish were bigger in 2001.  When the fish conditions were measured and the size of the shelf fish was measured it was determined that they were in better condition in 2002 and 2003.  In 2002 the fish were larger especially in the shelf habitat.  Temperatures slightly differ from year to year.  The year that had the good survival rate was slightly colder.  The fundamental conclusion from this work so far is that interannual variability in the conditions support fish growth.  The fish also have interannual variability in how they use the habitats, how much time they stay in PWS, and how much time they spend on the shelf.  When the fish encounter good conditions in all the habitats they have a good survival rate that particular year.

The talk then switched to basin-scale modeling.  Hal spoke about the anomaly of sea surface temperature from 1999 to 2002 which resulted from the ROMS Circulation Model for the Basin Scale.  It was summarized that the sea surface temperature anomaly for that period follows the cold, hypothesized regime shift of 1998.  It was compared to a different summary of 1999 to 2002.  The conclusion was that the basin-scale model is now getting to the point where it is able to replicate some of the observed interannual and decadal scale variability that has been observed.  Both the Gulf of Alaska region and the California Current region are within the next nested scale.  There was more discussion of all the models that are now being run. 

A slide on the Shelf-Break T-S in LTOP Summers was shown.  Hal pointed out the historical mean climatology for the period of July 1997 to July 2003.  In July of 2003 it was noticed that there was cold fresh minty water.  This water persisted in the summers of 2002, 2003 and 2004.  There was a significant input subsurface of subartic water (cold and fresh) and this water was high in nutrients.  The question is what type of impact did this water have on the ecosystem. 

Hal then moved on to showing the climatology of oxygen concentration at a near shore station in the month of July.  If the oxygen concentration goes below 1.5 milliliter per liter then the water becomes hypoxic which is dangerous for benthic animals.  This regional is low in oxygen because all the nutrients that came into the system and was up welled and stimulated massive phytoplankton blooms.  Much of this material sank to the bottom and decomposed causing these hypoxic conditions.  Location and duration of hypoxic water in inner-shelf habitats is controlled by event-scale wind forcing.  There was a low-oxygen source water in 2002 from the subarctic invasion.  In the future, hypothesis testing will be done with models and observing systems.

Did this have an impact on the copepod population?  Copepod biomass increased dramatically in 2000 and 2001.  It is believed that this was a delayed response to the 1998 regime shift.  Now a pattern is evident.  When PDO is negative, (“cool phase”) cold water or northern species have high biomass whereas the warm water southern species have low biomass and vice versa.  The changes are rapid and approach order of magnitude differences among years.  It’s not known if this is a true regime or if it is a regime that is more variable.  Regimes are often characterized as 10-20 year periods of reasonably consistent conditions.  Nothing has been consistent regarding the conditions in the Northern California Current for the last five to seven years.

Which type of food particle would you prefer if you were a sardine, salmon or sablefish?

Ample evidence has been presented at this meeting as well as in publications, that a fat fish is a fish that will almost certainly survive the winter whereas a slim fish is threatened. Northern (boreal) copepod species package up those lipids needed for successful over-wintering not only for themselves (if they survive) but for fishes.  This lipid hypothesis may be that which gives definition to the meaning of a negative or positive value of the PDO.  

Hal went on to give an overview of what he presented at the PICES Meeting.  The two regions that were studied were the California Current System and the Gulf of Alaska. Coho peaked in the 70’s and early 80’s in the South.  Most species in the north had a minimum in that time.  Since the time of the regime shift Coho populations in the south have declined.  Pink and several other species in the north have increased dramatically.  This is one of the fundamental data sets that made up the hypothesis that went into the NEP Program.  The hypothesis envisions that these two regions are co-varying out of phase and can we come up with mechanistic explanations for that.

The Central Hypotheses also states that the production regimes in the CGOA and CCS covary and are coupled through atmospheric and ocean forcing.  Spatial and temporal variability in mesoscale circulation constitutes the dominant physical forcing on zooplankton biomass, production, distribution, species interactions, retention and loss in coastal regions.  Ocean survival of salmon is primarily determined by survival of juveniles in coastal regions, and is affected by interannual and interdecadal changes in physical forcing and by changes in ecosystem food web dynamics.

The NEP Field Work timeline showed that the major field years were 2000 and 2002.  From the period of 2000 to 2004 there were L-Top cruises, process cruises, trawl sampling and trawl surveys.   It is hoped that the GLOBEC California Current Program will provide enough information to implement a cost effective local regional observing coastal program. 

Hal then went on to show a slide explaining the typical average summer temperature at 100 meters in the northern part of the Pacific and made note that there has been a significant displacement of cold water towards the east and the south.  There were 18 months of nearly sustained strong southward transport.  Winter air pressure patterns set up strong wind anomalies that pushed cold water toward the east in the subarctic Pacific, and strengthened the subtropical gyre circulation, including the southern flowing EBC.

The second item he emphasised at the PICES Meeting was flow-topography interactions,

production and ecosystem patterning.   This is an area that is focused on Heceta Bank, but can be seen as an inter-program synthesis topic because of similarities between the other GLOBEC Regions.

A 5-m temperature (color contour) slide was shown for the August 2000 Survey in Heceta Bank.   There is cold water along the coast.  Juvenile Chinook and Juvenile Coho were abundant.  There were also humpback whale sightings.

Hal noted the following legacy items for the NEP Program:

•         Improved knowledge and understanding—mechanisms controlling abundances and distributions of marine populations, and how they are impacted by climate

•         Coupled biophysical models

•         Extensive data sets for testing models, retrospective analysis and comparison to future process studies

•         A new basis for resource management that considers climate variability operating through ocean physics; a more ecosystem-oriented approach to fisheries management

Future

•         GLOBEC NEP concludes field sampling next month

•         Continuation of these valuable time series datasets is desirable, but will require new funding sources.

•         Synthesis Phase (2005-2009?) to obtain better mechanistic understanding, develop refined models, and formulate new ecosystem-based management.

     AO’s For George’s Bank

     Dale addressed several issues that arose earlier in the day and needed to be revisited regarding the George’s Bank AO.  The first issue questioned whether or not the current George’s Bank AO is significantly clear on the priority that the SSC would like to give to large scale contacts.  The second issue was whether or not there should be a combined AO for George’s Bank and the Coastal Gulf of Alaska.

Copies of the current AOs were distributed to the SSC.  Discussion of the AO’s ensued.   The purpose of combining the two AO’s would be strictly for convenience.  If both AO’s are ready to go at the same time should they be put in the same announcement?

Peter Wiebe noted that when the George’s Bank AO was modified as a result of the comments that were received and that a section was added that allows for the opportunity for synthesis between GLOBEC Programs.  This AO is not specifically for George’s Bank only.

Beth Turner addressed an earlier issue about fitting the George’s Bank central synthesis into the larger frame work of the basin. She noted that this is in fact included in section 1B of the AO.  Questions arose as to whether or not the language in the AO was strong enough to get the intended point across. 

Zack Powell expressed some concerns that investigators will only submit to section 1A in the AO.  This would run counter to his sense of what the majority of the people on the committee want to see performed.  It would be unfortunate if that was the only modeling that remained in the George’s Bank Program. The importance to 1A relative to 1B is important. 

It was pointed out that the AO’s introductory section states that previous proposals directly focusing on the basin-scale coupling or climate-related phenomena were not funded.  The AO may want to contain a sentence here that this is a very high priority for the synthesis phase of this activity.

There was discussion that the AO should be broadened.  Should it be basin-wide or just regional?  Will this AO be interpreted correctly by the PI’s?  Is the language of the AO clearly stating what is wanted from the proposals? 

The sentences were modified and paragraphs were restructured.  There were questions as to what was the most important element of the AO.  For instance, Dale noted that he does not see the high priority as extending to having companion activities in the Norwegian Sea.  In order to properly interpret the George’s Bank data and to properly model it a larger-scale context maybe needed.

Right now the AO is calling for two year projects. Is this going to provide enough time for the synthesis projects that are being suggested?  It takes years to develop the kinds of partnerships that are being suggested.  It was noted that the two year period was decided upon in hopes of synchronizing the programs.  

Action items for the text of the AO were to consider rewording the introduction to add priority to the things that were not funded in the last announcement and reconstruction of section 1. This needs to be done before the end of the SCC meeting.  Several committee members agreed to rework the AO and have a new draft ready for Friday’s meeting.  The timeline will be addressed in the afternoon.  (See page 22.)

     Afternoon Session

     Dale opened the afternoon session with the suggestion of having the next SSC Meeting in the spring in St. Petersburg, Florida.  After looking for conflicting dates with other meetings it was decided to focus attention for the spring meeting in either the last week of April or first week in May. 

     Science Seminar

     Steve Murawski presented a seminar entitled Spatial Management of Fish and Fisheries off the NE USA.    Steve started with a brief overview of his talk which will include the follow points:

1. History of spatial management off NE, and definition of concepts
2. New England & Mid-Atlantic fishery closed areas:  a 10 year case study in temperate waters (7 pseudo-replicates) (GLOBEC is not the only ongoing experiment!)
3. Evidence for “spillover” and “export” from closed areas, empirical analyses  & transport modeling
4. Efficacy of spatial management for complex species assemblages in temperate waters – “sessile spectrum”  - Two case studies, groundfish & scallop
5. Impacts of spatial closures (year-round & “rolling”) on effort patterns, spatial dynamics and productivity of the fishery & stocks

There are three main potential effects of spatial management (closed areas, restricted gear areas, reserves, etc.)  The first is the reserve effects.  If you run a closed area year round you will eventually see some demographic shifts of a higher density in closed areas, reproductive output increases, potentially resulting in spill over or net movement out of adults (apart from ontogenetic or other non-density related movements.)  This is actually a difficult proposition to validate, particularly in the Northern area where there is a large potential for movement of animals.  They migrate for various reasons.  So, it may not necessarily be spill over. 

A big question that arises in establishing closed areas is do we create a “fatal attraction” of fishing effort to reserve boundaries, seeking spillover.  This is an import factor that has not received enough modeling attention.  The net export is the export of larvae or juveniles to open areas.  Fisheries benefit from permanently closed areas via spillover, export, or overall reductions in fishing mortality rate.  The main reason why fishery managers are using closed areas is to try to push the fishing effort into areas of low productivity.  In the northeast the reason for closed areas is to try to avoid permanent reductions in fishing effort. 

The question of moving fishing vessels around to low productivity areas is a question of what is the catchability of the target species in one area versus in another.  What it does not address is the fact that you may be pushing fishing vessels on to different species which may not have the capacity to absorb any more fishing mortality.  Whether or not seasonal closures are effective for conservation is yet to be determined.  

Steve then spoke about the case study of Spatial Management in the Groundfish Fishery. 

Spatial closures started out in 1970’s.  They were primarily for the closure of known spawning grounds for haddock and yellow tailed flounder.  The idea was that if you closed areas to fishing when the animals were in their reproducing phase the survivorship of the eggs and larvae would be greater.  It was found that the animals were protected during spawning, but when the fences dropped people when into the area and the fishing was good until the animals dissipated and the schools were broken up.  In terms of the advocacy for the fishing mortality rate control it was a bust.  Not much could be said about its benefit.

In 1994 serious year round management measures began is some of these areas that were historical footprints for spawning closures. These year round closures showed differential effects.  Scientifically, there is a rich set of outcomes in looking at the groundfish fleet.  

In terms of the management regime, serious management of this fishery started in 1994, although it has been under regulation since 1976.  Some management measures for the Northeast groundfish fishery from 1994 to 2004 were:

1. Limited Entry
2. Effort Control (~50% Days at sea reduction)
3. Target Harvest Rates and Biomass Goals
4. Mandatory Reporting
5. Large-Scale Closed Areas (year-round & rolling)
6. Larger Minimum and Mesh Sizes
7. “Target” TACs
8. Some Effort Retirement Resulting in:

•         Lower fishing mortality rates

•         Improved spawning biomass & recruitment (some stocks)

•         Allocation battles, transboundary issues

•         Effort Redirection

A graphic of the status of NE finfish species group from 1963-2003 was shown.  It was noted that since 1994 the groundfish biomass has improved greatly due to the above- mentioned measures.  It is now higher than it was in the 80’s and is almost back to the levels that were seen in the 60’s.  This is quite a dramatic turnaround.

A spatial configuration of the management effort was shown.  More areas are closed part of the year then are left open.  These seasonal and year-round closures are a major measure used to manage 20 NE USA groundfish stocks.  The areas that are in the footprints of the closed areas are the richest fishing grounds.  There are 15 species and 20 stocks that are involved.   An area of approximately 22,000 km² is closed year-round.   This is a very large experiment area. 

Steve went on to discuss some questions that were addressed in their work.

1. Is there evidence of targeting of potential spillover of stock biomass from the closed areas?
2. Has effort become concentrated at the boundaries of the spatial management areas?
3. How has the placement of year-round closures influenced the spatial distribution of catches?
4. What are the effects of seasonal closures on the concentration of fishing effort and catch rates?
5. How does the presence of the year-round closures affect the spatial choice dynamics and other aspects of fisherman’s behavior?

He then showed graphics of otter trawl fishing effort from 1991-1993 and 2003 showing the number of days and specific areas that were fished.  He also showed a composite graphic of satellite tracking of over a quarter of a million vessels for 2003. He explained that each vessel is sampled every hour so their location is known.  You can infer what their heading and velocity is from the fact that you have two positions located in an hour’s time. This enables you to figure out their speed. This was done for the vessels with speeds greater than 3.5 knots.  When this data was filtered, it was determined that trawling occurs when the vessel speed is below 3.5 knots.  Most fishing is done within 5 miles of the closed area. 

He went on to talk about the requirements for “Spillover”:

1.  differential densities in verses out equals “reserve effect” – fishery-independent data
2.  density gradient declining from the edge of the closed area
3.  a test for density gradients is: density vs. distance from edge
4.  the pattern of fishing effort concentration near the edge may influence the apparent density gradient, for more elaborate  models. 

The problem with fishery-dependent data is that it is not like standardized trawl, it all has to be calibrated. He then showed a series of effort calibrations for various vessels. 

Steve moved on to a discussion of the cost per hour at the five year round closed areas.  Right up to the boundaries of most of the closed areas there is a high catch productivity rate.  It is not true of the Western Gulf of Maine areas or by the Nantucket Lightship.  On a whole the catch rates close to the boundaries of the closed areas are very high. 

One of the issues with the gradient systems is that animals have different preferred habitats and depth of temperature distributions.  The yellowtail flounder are associated with the closed area boundaries.  They are a shallow water species.  Winter flounder is a shallow water species as well.  Haddock has a high catch rate around the closed area boundaries.  There is a contrast between haddock and cod in that there is no aggregation of cod around the closed area.  As you get to the species that have deeper water depth distributions like monk fish, they are primarily not associated with the closed areas. 

Therefore, you have this whole continuum of potentials to responses for these closed areas that are associated with the habitat preferences of the stock.  One can look at the fishing effort in relation to the proportion of the total catch of the various species to the minimum distance from the closed area.  Forty-two percent of US haddock catches were generally made with 1 kilometer of a closed area.  This proves that people are targeting spill over. 

Steve noted that the lesson to be learned is that just because there are closed areas, this does not mean that all the species will spill out.  Some species may not have the requisite biomass and age structure because of the low migratory potential across the boundary or the depth distribution may be wrong.  

The next effect he talked about was the reserve effect.  The way to look at this is based on sampling that they continue to do in the closed areas.  They are using forty years of trawl surveys from 1963 to 2003.  They went back and looked at the footprints of the closed areas (four areas) and then looked at the catch rates inside the closed areas versus that outside of the closed area. 

In a particular survey the number of stations that find their way into the closed area is a random event because they are stratified random station selections.  The data are quite variable but it does give a clue as to potential for biomass accumulation in the closed area.   Steve showed a bar graph displaying the ratio of the catch rates of specific species inside versus out for the autumn and spring for closed area one. 

He pointed out the catch rates for the period of 2001-2003 for haddock.  In the autumn surveys the catch rate difference was over thirty and in the spring it was around nineteen.  For many of the species there are no accumulation effects.  If you look at the total number of animals and the total weight caught there does not seems to be a huge effect. Haddock, yellowtail flounder and winter flounder have some accumulation.

The same thing occurs for the closed area two.  This closed area is very interesting in that    

if you look at haddock you see an accumulation in the spring.  There is a very high ratio inside versus out.   There is no ratio in the fall.  This is because the animals are migrating out of the area.  There is a spawning area that they migrate to; they don’t accumulate there year round.  That is why there are high catch rates of haddock associated with the migration out as opposed to a spillover effect.  So you have this set of two level tests, where they have to accumulate in the area year round as well as having a density gradient.  You cannot have one or the other. 

Steve then showed a close up look at the haddock associated with closed area one in the fall.  The area was closed in the beginning of 1994.  There was a very dramatic increase in the haddock distribution in the fall.  The fall is not the spawning period.  There was basically no accumulation on the outside.  So you have a really interesting paradox where forty-two percent of the landing occurring at the closed area boundary, but no accumulation of biomass outside the closed area.  What is happening is that fishermen are intercepting all of the migrating animals they would be seeding the open areas.  He went on to note they may have set up a killing zone across the top of closed area one where when any adult fish gets out of the area it is being taken by the fisherman.

At the present time, they have not been able to reduce the fishing mortality rate of cod due to the fact that they migrated at perpendicular angles to the killing zone.  In some ways they may be inflicting great mortality rates on the cod because they make frequent moves across the area. 

The next issue Steve addressed was export.  Are we starting to get an accumulation of haddock recruitment coming out of the closed areas as a function of preserving the spawners? Steve then show a recruitment series based on the trawl surveys of age zero fish and their first year of life.  The GLOBEC period from 1995-1999 with the 1998 year being a good year class.  The 2003 year was phenomenal; unfortunately it was not a GLOBEC year.  It is important to note that the area was closed during the GLOBEC years and we saw spawning biomass accumulation.  The graph shows that a fair amount of biomass was being accumulated between the GLOBEC years of 1995-1999.

The real question is “What is the fate of the biomass that is accumulated in terms of their larvae?”  He went on to show haddock larvae data from the GLOBEC program for the various station locations. He then took samples from closed area one.  The question would be if the pattern of larvae abundance is different in that area versus the Bank as a whole. 

Steve then showed how he compared all the samples from 1995 to 1999.  Prior to 1998 there was very little in terms of haddock larvae catch.  The scale is much lower than the total bank, but starting in 1998-1999 there was a big pick up in the larvae production in this area.  If you look at the Bank as a whole, the disparity isn’t so high.  It is likely that there is some differential in larvae production originating from area one as opposed to the bank.  This is very interesting because this may be one of the few demonstrations of an export event from a permanently closed area.  The hydrodynamic model will help to determine this.  This is a hot topic that needs to be explored.

He went on to discuss the accumulation of the haddock in the spring from the trawl surveys.  It is this accumulation in the spring that is very important.  Catch rates can be observed on a month to month basis because there is a density of fishery-dependent data.  Catch rates slow down during the spawning season of the animal.  It is quite likely that the high catch rates before the spawning cycle may be animals that are migrating into the closed area for purposes of spawning.   

An interesting note he made was that the fishermen claim that if the wind blows from the east for an extended period of time they run to the west side of the closed area because there may be wind-driven movement of water masses that lift the haddock out to the edge making them vulnerable to fishing.  One could run the GLOBEC models to look at the potential for water mass displacement and to look at the biological measures from this intensive biological field of fishing success around the edges of a closed area.  This would be an area for additional modeling. 

Steve also spoke about the biology of groundfish.  How do the fish actually move around?  People have been tagging fish for nearly 100 years in this area. He showed a standard disc tag that is still in use.  There is also a new development of a high technology data storage tag that records every 15 seconds the depth, the temperature, and the time. He reviewed the findings of the depth profile of a yellowtail flounder that was tagged. He talked about the depth profile.  Once the fish was tagged it immediately moved to deeper water, but then it made a hike back up.  Yellowtail flounder is a shallow water species.  There were interesting off-bottom movements noted.  The temperature of the water in the top of Georges Bank has a strong influence of cold water from the Gulf of Maine and warm water on the bank.  The fish are getting up into the water column on a flood tide from the Gulf of Maine side and maintaining their position on the bank on the flood tide.  The range of temperature variation is extreme.  Hydrodynamic modeling in this area would be important to determine how much of this movement is passive versus active.

Steve then spoke about how the fisherman are adapting to what is going on. He showed a diagram regarding a typical offshore otter trawl trip with 25-50 tows.  The fisherman on this particular trip started making tows and then moved if they determined that the catch rates were not good enough.  There is a big cost in moving around without catching anything.  When catching is good next to the closed area everyone tends to fish there.  They are now trying to work on putting together a bioeconomic dynamics model for fishing trips looking at costs, distances (e.g., to port), degree of “loading” to capacity, time as a cost, and cumulative revenues. 

Is it better to fish up against the closed area in hopes of every once in awhile getting a big hit even though it costs more in overhead to fish there or are you better off fishing in areas where the catch rate may not be as great, but the overhead is less?  If fishing is good in an area the fishermen are not going to move because of the cost associated with it. 

The last thing Steve spoke about was sea scallop fishing.  Last years catch rate was higher than it has ever been. The sizes of the scallops are much larger. This is partly because of the closed areas.  There are several areas on Georges Bank that are sea scallop areas.  There are two others off the coast of New Jersey and Virginia Beach.  It’s not clear if reproductive products in one area were associated with another area?  Rotation of closed areas is good for some species.

Some Preliminary Findings are:

•         spatial resolution of fishery-dependent data a key

•         limitation in understanding spatial mgt. effects

•         clear evidence of effort attraction to 2 MPAs, seeking spillover at scale of less then or equal to 4 km (20 km tows)

•         spillover and reserve effects evident for a minority of

•         stocks/closed area combinations, significant for $PUE – mean/variance tradeoff fishing near closed areas

•         seasonal closures induced higher effort after re-opening, even though CPUEs not necessarily higher

•         presence of closures fundamentally modified spatial behavior of fishermen & benefits from fisheries

•         Great opportunity to use GLOBEC tools and data

AO’s

Dale returned to the AO’s and their timelines with the associated issues of synchronicity or not for all the AO’s.   A chart was made to view the timing of all the AO’s.

DURATION OF PRESENT AO’s

	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
NEP CCS	XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX
NEP GOA		XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX
NWA		XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX
SO	XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX
GLOBEC INTERN’L	XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX	XXXXXX
IPO CLOSES						XXXXXX
PAN REGIONAL		MAYBE	MAYBE	XXXXXX	XXXXXX

Discussion continued on how to set up the AO’s.  Questions arose concerning when funding will start and for how many years.  Should there be one announcement for all Pan Regional Synthesis?  How does the SSC move ahead to get all programs on the same schedule?  Should there be yearly Pan Regional opportunities so projects can be phased in?  Gaps in the program can be filled in by addressing these gaps with targeted programs.  No clear decision was reached.  (Discussion continues on page 31.) 

     Agency Reports

     NSF

     Phil Taylor presented the NSF Report.  He discussed the status of the proposals that were received for the last (NEPCCS) AO.  There were fourteen proposals received, nine of which are slated to be funded depending on funding amounts.  At the present time, NSF does not have a set budget, but it should be around the same amount as last year.

Phil then commented on the dissatisfaction with the overall level of synthesis in the NEP proposals.  He spoke about the strong letter of recommendation that the panel wrote to the program officers and the GLOBEC SSC regarding the review of the proposals and how to think about setting strategies for the overall synthesis in place.  Copies of this letter were distributed to the SSC. 

     NOAA

     Beth Turner presented the NOAA Report.  The 2005 NOAA budget has not been passed.  The NOAA budget structure should be the same as last year.  GLOBEC appears in the language that the Senate wrote for the budget.  The overall level of funding is uncertain.  Funding may be down approximately $8 million; therefore, there will be budget pressures. Since GLOBEC was named in the budget, when the money becomes available GLOBEC will be funded.  Beth noted that the people working through CORE and the others that worked to get the GLOBEC message out were successful. 

     Comments

     Zack Powell addressed the committee regarding sending the NEP PI’s who will be meeting in with the next few weeks guidance regarding their synthesis efforts.  Make this group start thinking about their needs for synthesis.  

Dale noted that John Hare will take the lead on rewriting the George’s Bank AO.  Zack and Dale will be collaborating with him. 

     NEW STANDING COMMITTEES

     National Conferences

     Dale moved to a discussion stemming from the formation of new standing committees.  He first spoke about the need for National Conferences.  Dale opened the floor for discussion on the kinds of workshops and national summary conferences that the SSC would like to envision and then questioned as to where on the timeline those activities would fit.

Some upcoming National Conferences are 2006-PIECES/ICES, 2007 Zooplankton, 2008 SO Synthesis Proposal, 2009 International GLOBEC Closing. Concern was expressed regarding the timing of these conferences. Dale suggested that the conference be free standing and not piggyback on another meeting.  The attendance for the conferences will be around two hundred people.  Discussion ensued about where to hold these conferences.  It was agreed that the final GLOBEC Conference will be held in Washington D. C.  The purpose of these conferences would be to highlight GLOBEC results, its successes and contributions.  There will be no concurrent sessions.  This should be done before the Pan Regional Phase. 

The question was asked if there is a plan to have some kind of write up as a report in either the GLOBEC Series or to have a special volume from this or is it just a workshop to get people together.  This may be a good time to put something together since many of the PI’s will be there.  It was noted that if this was an added value to the meeting then the meeting would be more interesting and more rewarding for the attendees.  What form it would take, a special volume could be discussed further.  This could be a first combined special volume for all the regions. 

The meeting will be free standing and may take place a week after the AGU meeting in a different location on the west coast.  It was determined that more concrete planning is needed.

     Ecosystems Subcommittee - Steve Murarski-Chairperson

     Although the Ecosystem Subcommittee has not had an official meeting as of yet, Steve talked about the emergence of some ecosystems activities particularly since this is becoming an important issue in NOAA. These ecosystem activities could be the basis of a white paper that the committee could write relative to how one could use the results of the various GLOBEC Programs and how these results can be integrated into a system.

The driving force is the U. S.  Commission on Ocean Policy (2004): Ecosystem-based Management: U.S. ocean and coastal resources should be managed to reflect the relationships among all ecosystem components, including human and nonhuman species and the environments in which they live. 

Pew Oceans Commission (2003): The principal objective of American fishery policy should be to protect the long-term health and viability of fisheries by protecting, maintaining, and restoring the health, integrity, productive capacity, and resilience of the marine ecosystems upon which they depend. This objective should apply to all U.S. ocean waters.  

In terms of emerging issues, there are a number of parallel things going on in fishery management because of the interest in ecosystem related things.  People are starting to look at ecosystem-based objectives for fishery management not just restoring the species or fisheries one at a time.  Within NOAA there is a group that is drafting the guidelines that would be needed in order to guide the fishery management council.  At the present time, there is no legislation in place that requires this, but there a number of draft bills concerning this subject. 

Another driving force is the integration with IOOS on the biological components with the regionalization of physical oceanography observing systems.  This is a big opportunity because in GLOBEC we had a lot of experience in developing observing systems. 

Another issue is the Contents of Integrated Ecosystem Assessments.  People are interested in knowing what the current health of the ocean is in relation to some bench mark.  That’s a nebulous concept, but it’s clear that this is what is driving the legislation.  Scientists need to come up with a set of matrix that can be utilized to say whether or not a system is highly compromised.  There has been a lot of research on this, but nothing has coalesced into a common set of dialog.  From a science standpoint we are trying to get some view of ecosystem assessment; what it is, what components we need.  This goes back to the observing systems in order to feed the health induces.  People are not going to do observing just for the sake of observing.  They are going to do it to make some statements about how the system is functioning now in relation to a point in the past or a future goal.   

Steven went on to speak about NOAA’s Vision:  “To move NOAA into the 21st century scientifically and operationally, in the same inter-related manner as the environment that we observe and forecast, while recognizing the link between our global economy and our planet’s environment.”  NOAA has realigned the programs into their functions.  There are four strategic goals of Ecosytems, Climate, Weather, and Water Transportation and Commerce.  Ecosystems is the biggest.   The goal of the ecosystems is to protect, restore, and manage the use of coastal and ocean resources through ecosystem-based management. 

Steve showed a map outlining the Large Marine Ecosystems of the United States and linked watersheds.  There are ten ecosystems that are going to be the focus of the realignment of the programs to integrate these systems.

In all of living marine resources management issues there are three focal issues that reoccur.  They are: 

•         Bycatch or Fishery Interactions:  Bycatch and fishery interactions including mortalities of non-target species arise when multiple fisheries share the same species.  

•         Indirect Effects of Harvesting: Indirect effects of harvesting through trophic interactions, and indirect effects through habitat-alteration, e.g. by fishing gear.   

•         Interactions between Biological and Physical Components of Ecosystems:  Trends in environmental variables (e.g. temperature, other oceanographic attributes) may result in long-term re-structuring of ecosystems.

Fishery Management Councils (FMCs) do not have a sufficient authority to consider all critical issues affecting Living Marine Resources’ (LMRs) in regional ecosystems (e.g., nutrients, toxics, coastal modifications, etc.)  Spatial management is usually considered a cornerstone of Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries (EAF).

In FY04, Congress allocated approximately $2 million for NOAA-Fisheries to conduct ecosystem management pilot projects in the New England, Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico regions.  Report language from the Senate stated that the pilots purposely cover bodies of water that are contiguous, because the one influences the others. Ultimately, should the pilots prove successful; the Committee would expect to fold more specific initiatives into the larger ecosystem approach.

He then highlighted the spending plan for three pilot projects and their projected outcomes:

1. Enhance Regional Ecosystem Governance Structures through Fishery Management Councils (FMCs)

•         Determine Management Objectives, Threats, Options, and Alternatives

2. Conduct Technical Workshops 

•         Establish dialog between science and management in applying ecosystem principles to fisheries        

•         Assess the state-of-the-art, and facilitate dialog

•         Determine technical needs

3. Develop Quantitative Decision Support Tools

•         Develop quantitative methods, frameworks and software to aid decision makers in evaluating management options and their consequences (models and GIS tools)

Projects Funded for FY-04 were:

•         A Spatially-Explicit Ecosystem Model to Examine the Effects of Fisheries

•         Management (NW Center, U Washington, CSIRO-Australia)

•         Ecosystem-Based Decision Support Toolbox (NE Center)

•         Development of Quantitative Performance Indicators for Ecosystem Management (SE Center)

•         Ecosystem Attributes and Adaptive Approaches During Stock Rebuilding (SW Center & UC-Santa Cruz)

•         Analytical Framework Development for EFH (SW Center, NW Region)

•         Critical Evaluation of Ecopath and Ecosim Modeling Approaches (NW Center

•         U Washington, U British Columbia)

There are also GIS Applications in Support of Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management (EcoGIS).  The goal is to develop analytic capabilities of advanced GIS to support Ecosystem Approaches (e.g., more that just drawing maps) – not necessarily just to provide specific applications for use by Councils.

Two Types of GIS Products to be developed:

•         Management-Level Applications with graphical user interface and ability to quickly and easily summarize data layers

•         Science-Level Tools, with imbedded modeling and optimization capabilities

Primary Developers are several units of National Ocean Service. 

The Fishery Management Council Project goals and tasks are to:

•         Conduct public meetings with stakeholder groups to identify  and prioritize ecosystem-related issues

•         Participate in coordinated opinions/attitudes survey with wider   public input

•         Identify technical needs & inventory existing regional Information (including that       held by NOAA)

•         Synthesize public input on Ecosystem Goals and Objectives

Future Ecosystem Pilot Projects include:

•          Social Science Survey Instrument Workshop (Nov 29-Dec 2, Miami, FL)

•         Decision Support Tool Workshop (DST)  (February, Key Largo)

o       Primarily a science needs assessment to support EAF

o       What constitutes an Integrated Ecosystem Assessment?

•         Coordination meeting among Council Staffs

•         Opportunity for Dialog – All-Council Workshop in Baltimore

During FY-05 monies will be available depending on language and  develop process for expanding pilots.

A white paper should be written to show how GLOBEC related issues interface with the activities mentioned above.  Steve noted that if this is accomplished GLOBEC will have done a good job. The subcommittee will meet to take the framework and relate GLOBEC to it.  A draft will be available at the next GLOBEC SSC Meeting.  Careful consideration will be given to pin pointing the target audience for this white paper.

      Pan Regional Synthesis Subcommittee

      Mike Fogarty-Chairperson

      Mike began by giving the following background.  His scientific steering committee had previously established a group that was looking at the question of synthesis and comparative analysis as an overall strategy for the program.  The focus of this activity encompassed both synthetic activities at the regional program levels and pan regional level.  He then made reference to the letter that was distributed from the NEP review committee which gives this general issue a new sense of urgency.  There were some concerns expressed in the letter from the review panel that sufficient guidance had not been provided in terms of overall synthesis activities. 

Mike then went on to speak about the regional synthesis issue.  This is one of the focal points for the concerns that were raised by the NEP panel.  He suggested that there are some fundamental structural elements to the way the GLOBEC Program was put together that define the approach to the regional synthesis activity.  The main message is that it was set up in terms of having modeling as a fundamental feature of both guiding the structure of the program itself and as the principle synthetic tool.  The issue of pan regional synthesis takes a different form, one that is essentially suited to a comparative analysis. 

Mike then asked everyone to step back and look at the program as a whole.  From the inception it was decided that the program would define the areas where efforts would be concentrated so as to allow us to look at areas that are sensitive to climate change and variability and areas in which there would be a clear shot in understanding specific processes that are dominant in these different systems. 

The systems types chosen by U.S. GLOBEC are: 

•         Georges Bank/NW Atlantic - Retentive Bank System that is strongly influenced by a classical western boundary current system.             

•         California Current System - Upwelling/Downwelling System that is influenced by an eastern boundary current system. 

•         Coastal Gulf of Alaska - Buoyancy-Driven Flow System

•         Southern Ocean - Ice-Dominated System

The overall picture and organizing theme is the overriding influence in each of these systems which are dominated by strong atmospheric forcing mechanisms that effect temperatures, precipitation and wind fields.  In particular, these have follow-on effects in basic hydrography and physical structure of the oceans which in turn have very critical influences on biological responses from primary production all the way up to fishery yield.

Mike went on to talk about the overall goal of synthesis including regional and pan regional.  The program needs to have a framework for integrating process-oriented, broad meso-scale, and retrospective studies in conceptual and mathematical models.

This is needed in order to bridge spatial and temporal scales of GLOBEC studies to understand climate-scale impacts and also to develop predictions of population & ecosystem response to climate change and variability.  Finally, for the pan-regional synthesis we want to position ourselves in a way where we can make comparisons among U.S. GLOBEC study locations and international programs to ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  We want to extract the broader lessons of how climate is affecting these systems by comparative methods. 

Mike proposed the following acronym:  Nested Interdisciplinary Regional Variables and Numerical Analyses (NIRVANA.)

He then moved on to regional synthesis saying that they made their decision on how to approach the problems.  Below are the steps that will be taken for the Regional Synthesis

of the U.S. GLOBEC programs: 

•         Mapping of regional GLOBEC projects into modeling needs for data assimilation, parameter estimation, and model validation

•         Intermediate-level synthesis of data products (e.g., derived or second-order estimates from primary data)

•         Gap Analysis – can we fill in the missing pieces (from other programs, literature values etc.)?

•         Development of predictive models of the effects of climate forcing on the dynamics of target species and ecosystem characteristics in U.S. GLOBEC systems.

He then showed a diagram of how all the following pieces fit together:  synthesis & prediction, modeling, retrospective analysis, technological innovation, broad-scale observations, and process studies.  He spoke about how they relate to each other. 

The modeling activities being focused on are hydrodynamic models that are presently operating and also the ocean circulation models.  There will be more discussion on linking with atmospheric models.  There is the need to go to the basin scale into order to get the proper level of resolution to address climate scale impacts.  Central to this whole process is the data acquisition programs. 

The principle biological models that have been looked at are NPZ Models or individual models for either fish or zooplankton.  The basic idea is that we need to make sure that the projects are fully integrated into these models so we can take full advantage of the observations for the questions we are asking. 

Mike then when on to talk about the management connection and implications for ecosystem-based management.  Two important issues are consideration of bottom-up controls in production processes and low-frequency forcing and shifts in production domains. 

Mike emphasized that what they really need to focus on is the importance of low frequency forcing and shifts in production domains.  This would be thought about in the situation in where we have environmental forcing affecting the overall production domains, which there is a density independent forcing that takes place.  What you would be providing in advice to managers would entail whether you shift from a favorable to a less favorable environment.  You need to adjust management strategies depending on how the systems respond. 

Some Regional Synthesis Products that would result are:

•         Operational Models

•         Symposia/Special Sessions at Scientific Meetings

•         Dedicated Volumes/Special Issues of Journals

•         Synthetic Books

•         Management Advice for Ecosystem-Based Management

The goal of Pan-Regional Synthesis in U.S. GLOBEC is to extract broader lessons of climate change impacts on marine systems through comparison of responses to environmental forcing at the ecosystem, community and population levels in order to facilitate prediction and analysis.  Ultimately, we need to move toward comparative studies where there are contrasts among related species within regions, among regions, and across system types and processes.

Mike then went on to remind everyone of the physical processes studied for each regional program:  Gulf of Alaska - buoyancy flow, downwelling, cross-shelf transport, and stratification; California Current - upwelling/downwelling, cross-shelf transport, alongshore transport, retention and stratification; Georges Bank – stratification, retention/loss and cross-front exchange; and for the Southern Ocean - sea ice dynamics, stratification and retention.  There are common elements in all the regions.  There are also elements that are quite specific to the different areas. 

Principal Target Species included:  Gulf of Alaska - calanoid copepods, euphausiids and pink salmon; California Current - calanoid copepods, euphausiids, coho salmon and chinook salmon; Georges Bank - calanoid copepods, cod and haddock; and for the Southern Ocean - euphausa superba.  Again there are common elements and unique elements. 

He then showed a matrix of the physical process and the target species for the different regional observations.  There are areas where we can make comparisons between the physical process and the target species.  There was a fundamental way in which we went about choosing the taxa that we studied.

Mike went on to discussion some organizing themes for GLOBEC synthesis & comparative analysis which are: 1)large-scale atmospheric forcing and ocean ecosystem dynamics, 2) retention and dispersal and the role of topographic control of circulation, 3) top down-bottom up controls on production and the trophic cascade hypothesis, 4) life history strategies in variable environments, and 5) importance of basin-scale processes.

He went on to mention potential comparisons with other programs such as GLOBEC Canada, Northern Cod Recovery Program, ICES Cod and Climate Program, TransAtlantic Study of Calanus, EVOS, PICES Climate Change & Carrying Capacity, Ocean Carrying Capacity and CCAMLR. 

In summary, U.S. GLOBEC studies share a fundamental philosophical and methodological framework.  We can take advantage of this to foster synthesis and integration.  The key issues are to apply comparative methods across taxa; apply common modeling strategies in different U.S. GLOBEC study system types to extract broader lessons from regional GLOBEC studies; and to bridge spatial temporal scales at which GLOBEC studies are conducted to evaluate climate-scale impacts on marine ecosystems.

     Implementation Plan

     Dale then addressed the SSC in response to the NEP letter.  US GLOBEC is in need of putting together an implementation plan for synthesis.  Dale asked if anyone was interested in joining a small group of people to prepare this draft.  Dale, Mike F., Kendra, Dennis and Zack will meet within the next six months to prepare this draft. 

After much discussion of the Pan Regional Synthesis Subcommittee Presentation made by Mike Fogarty-Chairperson it was noted by one committee member that the legacy of GLOBEC will set up the kinds of observations that we want to make over the long term. 

The meeting adjourned at 1730.

U. S. GLOBEC Scientific Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

Mesa Lab-Damon Room

National Center for Atmospheric Research

Boulder, CO

4-5 November 2004

Friday November 5, 2004

Members in attendance were Dale Haidvogel (Rutgers), Michael Alexander (NOAA-CIRES), Nick Bond (NOAA), Ric Brodeur (NOAA/NMSF/NWFSC), Jennifer Burns (UA Anchorage), Kendra Daly (USF), Jonathan Hare (NOAA), Dennis McGillicuddy (WHOI), Arthur Miller (Scripps), David Mountain (NMSF/NOAA), Steven Murawski (NMSF/NOAA), Thomas (Zack) Powell (UC Berkeley), Francisco Werner (UNC),  and Michael Fogarty (NOAA/NMFS).

Guests in attendance included Hal Batchelder (OSU), Madeline Gazzale (Rutgers), Linda Lagle (WHOI), Beth Turner (NOAA), David Robertson (Rutgers).

Members not in attendance were David Ainley (H.T. Harvey), Yochanan Kushnir (Lamont), Mark Ohman (Scripps), Susanne Strom (WWU), Ted Strub (OSU), and Peter Wiebe (WHOI), Eileen Hofmann (ODU), Phil Taylor (NSF), and Robin Smythe (NSF).

Guest speakers for the day included Bill Collins (Community Climate System Model) and Andy Moore (Ocean Data Assimilation Methods in Support of GLOBEC.)

Dale Haidvogel, Chairperson of the SSC, called the meeting to order at 0845 hours.  Following a brief welcome, an overview of the meeting’s agenda was presented.  He also made note of the handouts that were given to everyone:  revised agenda, revised version of the Northwest Atlantic AO, and a concept document for the Young Investigators Workshop. 

     Synthesis Discussion

     Dale began the discussion of the revised version of the Northwest Atlantic AO.  The changes have been made to more clearly state that the highest priority is directed toward the basin-scale coupling or climate related phenomena as it impacts the Georges Bank Ecosystem.  The individual changes were noted and reviewed.  There was much discussion on priority, wording, inclusion of certain synthesis efforts, and comparison and/or connection to other programs.  Questions arose as to the clarity of the AO and how it will be interpreted by the PI’s responding to it.    

The SSC worked together on making corrections.  The idea of a combined regional synthesis AO for the North West Atlantic and the Gulf of Alaska was discussed.  It may help to start the pan regional synthesis.  The combination would be good if the regions were on the same time scale.  You would not want to hold up one AO because of the other.  If the AO’s were combined it would show that an effort is being made to connect the programs.  The goals of that various regional programs are converging.   Questions arose about how it would be funded. 

It was felt by some SSC members that the AO’s should be back to back and not combined.  Other members felt the Georges Bank AO should not be delayed for the sake of language since it has be on the table for at least a year now.  There should be no delay for either AO. 

At this point a final decision as to combination of AO’s and release dates was not made.

Dale mentioned that the committee will review yet another revised version this afternoon.

Hal commented that the CGOA’s AO has not been reviewed by the SSC, although it is going through the legal process and it is not on today’s agenda.  Dale noted that everyone will receive a copy of the AO and the committee with review it today.

     NEP Synthesis Panel

     The Recommendations for GLOBEC Synthesis letter addressed to the NSF/NOAA GLOBEC Program Offices and the U. S. GLOBEC SSC from the NEP Panel Review was discussed.  The panel addressed questions on how to approach synthesis not only for the California Current, but also at the U. S. GLOBEC level.    

One of the panels main concerns as mentioned in their letter was that the NEP Studies, and perhaps anticipated future U. S. GLOBEC synthesis activities, may lack overall direction and planning in how to achieve new insights into the “structure and function of marine ecosystems in response to physical forcing” (GLOBEC goal).  Therefore, the panel is suggesting that a Synthesis Office/Committee be set up.  This could be a person or small group of people that are responsible for leading the synthesis phase.  

The issue is leadership.  The SSC and the subcommittees are important in this leadership function, but in themselves may not be sufficient.  Additional leadership could be provided by several people from GLOBEC or by the new hire of a Senior Executive Scientist.  There is a need for a central person or entity working full-time. 

GLOBEC is in a new phase and may need a more senior level scientist.  Dale asked for names of people that would be good for this position.  This position could possibly be career move for the right person.  Are we looking for, a facilitator or a director?  How this position is staffed will be determined by the positions responsibilities.  This discussion is slated to continue at a later point in today’s meeting. 

   Community Climate System Model (CCSM)

     Bill Collins from the National Center for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado was a guest speaker at the SSC Meeting.  He provided the SSC with an overview of the CCSM, its website http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu and made note of the program’s scientific objectives:

•         Develop a comprehensive climate model to study the Earth’s Climate

•         Investigate seasonal and interannual variability in the climate

•         Explore the history of Earth’s climate

•         Estimate the future of the environment for policy formulation

And recent accomplishments:

•         Release of a new version (CCSM3) to the climate community

•         Studies linking SST fluctuations, droughts, and extratropical variability

•         Simulations of last 1000 years, Holocene, and Last Glacial Maximum

•         Creation of largest ensemble of simulations for the IPCC AR4

The CCSM Community not only includes scientists from NCAR, but also scientists from other universities and labs in the United States, Europe and Asia and also government labs.  These groups of scientists are working with the physics, applications and chemistry of the model.  This development group includes about 300 scientists. The current model users are faculty, students and researchers.  Components of the Climate System are space, atmosphere and ocean.  The configuration of the CCSM3 model includes atmosphere, land, coupler, sea ice and ocean. 

Bill then went on to give a brief history of climate modeling from 1922 to 2007.  Dramatic changes in the evolution of climate modeling during the past, present and future have and will continue to occurred.  Climate modeling in the mid 1970’s included the atmosphere.  In the mid 80’s land surface was added.  In the early 90’s ocean and sea ice were added followed by sulphate aerosol in the late 90’s.  At the present time non-sulphate aerosols and the carbon cycle have been added and in the early 2000’s dynamic vegetation and atmospheric chemistry is expected to be added.

He then went on to discuss the organizational set-up of the CCSM Project.  There is a scientific steering committee and an advisory board.  There are working groups for the following areas:  atmosphere model, biogeochemistry, climate variability, climate change, land model, ocean model, paleoclimate, polar climate and software engineering.

Meetings are held regularly.  The Ninth Annual CCSM Workshop was held from July 5 to 9, 2004 in Sante Fe, New Mexico.  Attendance at these meetings has grown from approximately 90 scientists in 1996 to around 330 in 2004. 

The CCSM3 model was released on June 23, 2004.  Its contents include code, input data, and scripts, documentation, and simulations for present-day and pre-industrial conditions.  The model can be downloaded from: URL: http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/.

There have been over 200 downloads thus far. 

Products of the high resolution CCSM3 include:

•         Description of the physical climate (parallel Earth):

–        Temperature

–        Water in solid, liquid, and vapor form

–        Pressure

–        Motion fields

•         Description of the chemical climate:

–        Distribution of aerosols

–        Evolution of carbon dioxide and other GHGs

–        Coming soon: chemical state of surface air

•         Space and time resolution of these products:

–        1.3 degree atmosphere/land, 1 degree ocean/ice

–        Time scales: hours to centuries

Bill then moved on to show and talk about a slide depicting the simulation of recent climate change and the global mean temperature anomalies.  The model showed that the recent time period is outside the range of variability of past temperatures.  He then spoke about the changes in the atmospheric composition and indicators of the human influence on the atmosphere during the Industrial era.  He also showed a simulation model of aerosol distributions total optical depth by month for the years of 1995 to 2000.

He then went on to talk about a three-phase experimental configuration that was done.  The three phases included pre-industrial (1870), 20th Century (1870-2000) and future emissions scenarios.  

A movie loop of the comparison of CCSM3 and Global Surface Temperatures anomalies from 1960’s to 2000 was shown.  The 1990’s had five of the warmest years of the century.  Future temperature anomalies projections for the 21^st century were also shown.

He then made note that there are still some problems with the system and spoke about the representation of ENSO which may be of particular interest to the SSC.   He displayed a slide showing the observed availability of a model simulation of the correlation of the Nino 3.4 and SLP anomalies and SST anomalies over a two year period in which the findings showed that the magnitude was not reached. The correlation of Nino 3.4 and GPCP precipitation anomaly time series from 1979 to 2002 was also shown.   The slide also included the power spectrum of Nino 3.4 and the standard deviation of smoothed Nino 3.4 anomalies. 

The last part of his talk dealt with the future.  He started with the physical climate.  Climate models have traditional operated on a very poor scale relative to regional models.  This gap is narrowing.  We are now able to do century long simulations.  Models of global high-resolution simulations can now show us things that were not viewable before.  Several slides depicting these high resolutions were shown. 

He also spoke about the development of new grids and vertical coordinates for ocean physics and dynamics such as tripole grids and hybrid ALE vertical coordinates such as lagrangian coordinate in deep ocean, depth coordinate in mixed layer and improved deep ocean circulation.

His talk ended with the carbon cycle and its implication for coastal modeling.  There is concern with the carbon cycle input from fossil fuel in the atmosphere.  In the past the concentration in the outside of the atmosphere was specified.  Now, they are looking to specify the total concentration.  He then discussed slides depicting the simulations of interactive carbon dioxide and multi-century coupled carbon/climate simulations.  The latter slide highlighted, fully prognostic land/ocn BGC and carbon/radiation, atm-land: 70 PgC/yr ¯­; Atm-Ocean: 90 PgC/yr ¯­, net land+ocean: 0±1 PgC/yr, “Stable” carbon cycle and climate over 1000y, projection of climate change on natural modes,

detection and attribution and future climate projections/fossil fuel perturbations.  The evolution from ocean biogeochemistry model to ocean ecosystem modeling was also discussed along with simulated chlorophyll distributions. 

A regional chlorophyll simulation using ROMS showed the annual/mean chlorophyll for the California Current coastal region.  This was a very high resolution methodology for verifying the coastal evolution of chlorophyll.  The coastal zone modeling supported by CCSM includes ROMS, Weather and Research Forecast Model (WRF), Ecosystem Model and the Coastal Climate Model.  Work is being done to combine ROMS with WRF to develop a model for the California Coastal zone.   

In conclusion CCSM’s significant accomplishments of CCSM were the new version (CCSM3) and its release.  The code includes major scientific and software improvements, a large number of new runs (e.g., IPCC) and there is a growing community involvement.  An interdisciplinary program to extend the model to coupled chemistry/climate, biogeochemistry and land use has begun.  The near-term objectives are to improve simulation of the physical climate system and to perform more hypothesis-driven experiments.

     Senior Scientist Position for GLOBEC Office

     After the break the SSC regarding continued the discussion of the Senior Scientist that will be hired.  There are two options for this person.  One option would be for that person to have both scientific and office responsibilities or to have these two responsibilities distributed over two people with one being a more junior person doing more of the office duties and then having a Senior level person with senior level responsibilities and some research duties. 

A general comment was made that a senior scientist should know enough in order to run a program.  This new hire should be a senior scientist that may not necessarily be in Dale’s office, but would be dealt with as if it were another project.  The alternative would be to put a more junior person in Dale’s office.    

The SSC should make sure that the framework allows for innovation.  Brainstorming needs to be done to find out what the position should entail. The SSC has to find some type of mechanism to inject the proper person for this position. The SSC will try to identify various available people that might be interested in the position and then go from there.  This should be a full-time position with accountability.

     Workshops

     The SSC needs to focus on the types of workshops that GLOBEC needs to support in the coming years.  A timeline of workshops was discussed. 

1.      Young Investigators Workshop Summer 2005 *

2.      Pan-Regional Preview Workshop early 2006 *

3.      Annual Pan-Regional (PI’s JGOF’s like) 2007, 2008, 2009*

4.      Topical Workshops - Model Evaluation

5.      DC – Final GLOBEC Meeting 2009*

6.      GLOBEC Handoff 2008/2009 w/regional synthesis workshops

The workshops marked with an * are the workshops that the SSC sees as necessary.  The current GLOBEC grant in Woods Hole goes until 2005.  Thought must be given to how workshops will be funded after 2005. 

Dale then went on to discuss the concept document for the U. S. GLOBEC Young Investigator Modeling and Data Synthesis Workshop.  The idea is that there will be one or more workshops devoted toward bringing young investigators to the table that may be interested in GLOBEC synthesis.  The target date is July of 2005 with the duration of 4 weeks for a maximum of 20 participants.  

The SSC discussed whether or not an intense four-week program is the way to go.  Will it bring the right people to the table for synthesis? Where will the participants be drawn from?   This program would be a good legacy product and would help with GLOBEC synthesis and will hopefully spur interest to keep these young scientists working in this field.

It was noted that the Young Investigators Workshop should be viewed as an investment for the future.  Applicants that are from under-represented groups should be sought.  Perhaps a curriculum book can be developed after the Young Investigators Workshop. 

This type of book can be made available on the web with careful planning.

The question was posed as to whether or not the outcome of these workshops will be books.  An added value of the Pan-Regional Preview workshop would be some type of book or papers.  Up until this point the volumes that have come out have been regionally based.  When the Pan-Regional Phase is reached it maybe time to start publishing together with all the regions.

     REVIEW OF CGOA – Synthesis AO

     The SSC then reviewed the draft of the Coastal Gulf of Alaska AO.  The four major items in the AO are: 1) synthesis of data sets, 2) physical/biological modeling, 3) broader scale effects influenced by climate change and comparative regional studies, and 4) development of indices to characterize environmental and ecosystem status and change.    

Highlights of these items were reviewed and discussed.  It was noted that the background information on the AO was excellently written and was very thorough.  Minor revisions were discussed and made.  The AO was endorsed by the SSC.

The SSC also discussed the Northwest Atlantic/Georges Bank AO and noted that Peter will get to see the AO revisions before it is submitted to NSF.

It was decided that the NWA/GB AO and the CGOA AO will be combined by NSF. Dale Haidvogel will work with Beth Turner NOAA and Phil Taylor NSF to accomplish this.  

     Science Seminar

     Ocean data assimilation methods in support of GLOBEC

     The second Science Seminar was presented by Andy Moore from the University of Colorado.  His talk focused on the dynamics of data assimilation, how it works and how it can be useful for GLOBEC.   He also spoke about variational methods because they may prove to be most useful for GLOBEC.  

Data assimilation was described as the “optimum” combination of observations and model fields such that the resulting estimate is more “reliable” than either observations or model alone.  All data assimilation methods can be derived from the fundamental ideas of Bayes Theorem.

Andy gave an example of minimum variance estimates (least-squares).  Data assimilation is about applying observations to models.  This is the fundamental principal behind all data assimilation. The simplest method of data assimilation is called nudging.  Others methods are successive correction, optimum/statistical interpolation, Kalman filters, 3DVar, S4DVar, W4DVar.  The 3DVar and the W4DVar are used for the atmosphere.  All have been used in oceanography leading to a wide array of applications and results.

Data assimilation is a fundamental component of operation of Numerical Weather Prediction. You cannot forecast tomorrow’s weather if you don’t know the state of today’s atmosphere. Data assimilation is used in oceanography to do ocean forecasting.  We will never be as data-rich as NWP so our knowledge of the circulation must be based on the combination of observations and models.

He went on to show a slide which displayed all the data sources on the land, sea and sky used by the ECMWF Meteorological Operational System (EMOS) to predict weather.

The accuracy of the forecast is almost reaching the accuracy of the observations for meteorology.  As for oceanography is it not as good.

He then spoke about the dynamics of data assimilation and the often overlooked theory of geostrophic adjustment.   He then gave a shallow water example and explained how to use the theory. 

The next topic of discussion was what fundamental principles apply to physical-biological data assimilation for GLOBEC and how do we ascertain these?  Andy addressed this by saying that the variational methods are best because of their success in NWP.  These are the most promising methods for GLOBEC synthesis efforts.  They provide unparalleled insights into the dynamics of data assimilation (within the linear regime at least). 

The 4-dimensional variational data assimilation (4DVar) comes in a strong constraint (perfect model), and a weak constraint (model errors).  The S4DVar is common in NWP. The W4DVar is less commonly used, but highly appropriate for oceanography.  Examples were given for S4DVar.  Information concerning state vector, model, initial condition, observations, and background are needed.  One must minimize the difference between model solution, observations and background in a least-squares sense.  Cost functions also need to be addressed.  For all practical purposes for his demonstration he assumed model, forcing and b.c.s were all error free. He showed the adjoint model and how it yields Green’s functions for observations.   

Another idea to this is called the representer function.  It can be shown that the optimal least-squares best fit solution between the model and observations can also be expressed as a linear combination of “representer functions.” Representers are covariance functions and provide information about the observable part of state space. The observability of data assimilation as it relates to the controllability of the forecast will provide you with the degrees of freedom. 

Admitting errors in model, forcing and b.c.s implies that only those parts of state space that are observed should be searched when minimizing J. Working with the representers ensures that only the observed degrees of freedom are constrained. The null/unobserved space is ignored.

The all-purpose adjoint makes constrained searches possible because it provides information only about the parts of state that are activated by the dynamical operators.

The adjoint provides the so-called generating functions of the resulting under-determined system.  Singular value decomposition (SVD) of the adjoint yields the activated subspace. He went on to give several examples of how the above can be used for GLOBEC.

All the above machinery has been put together for a state of the art ocean general circulation model known as the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS.) ROMS was developed at Rutgers University and UCLA.  Its highlights include:

•         Generalized orthogonal curvilinear, terrain-following coordinates.

•         A rich array of dynamical, physical, biological and open boundary options.

•         Widely used for regional and basin-scale modeling.

ROMS Tools: 

•         Tangent, representer and adjoint versions developed.

•         Data assimilation tools: S4DVar, W4DVar.

•         Generalized stability analysis: singular vectors, stochastic optimals, etc.

•         Ensemble prediction platform.

He showed some examples of ROMS including adjoint sensitivity maps (Green’s functions) and tangent linear (TL) solutions (crude representers) and explained these runs in detail.

Andy noted that the links to GLOBEC objectives include:  variational methods which hold the greatest promise for assimilating both biological and physical data sets; the interplay between physics and biology is particularly transparent using variational methods; adjoint and representer methods yield information about observability; and additional observations needed, and dependencies.

     New Member Replacements

     Three current members are approaching the end of their terms.  They are Kendra Daly, Mark Ohman and Ric Broudeur.  Kendra is approaching the end of her first term, but has agreed to sit for another term.  Therefore, there are only two spots that need to be filled.  The SSC has thought that three possible areas to fill with these two positions are pan-regional synthesis, fisheries management, with population dynamics being less important. 

Possible names for the two open positions were discussed and listed on the board.  Each potential member’s credentials were discussed and they were placed under their area of expertise.   The list of names was ranked in order of who to approach first. The SSC agreed upon six people who will be asked to stand for election for a three-year term.  If they accept the nomination their name will appear on the ballot.  The SSC members will cast their votes through email. The terms for these new SSC member positions will start at the spring 2005 SSC Meeting.

     Other Unfinished Business

     Mike Fogarty then led the SSC through the final discussion and corrections of the Georges Bank AO.  He commented on the issues of encouraging people to begin the process of synthesis in general, to indicate the connection with other programs in the Atlantic and also, wherever possible, to start the process with other US GLOBEC programs. The latter may not be possible because of synchrony between the programs.   At this time, it could be the transfer of information between programs.  The AO was rewritten to indicate comparisons with other programs and to open the door to begin the process of comparison among US GLOBEC programs.  Also, it will let the reader know that this AO is not the only shot to get in on synthesis, and that a call will be coming up soon for Pan-Regional synthesis. 

The revised AO was shown and read to everyone.  Additional corrections were made.  The AO will be sent to NSF and should be released as soon as possible.

     Action Items from Spring Meeting

     Dale mentioned the GLOBEC Highlights Power Point Presentation he is putting together.   He will send it around to the regional chairs for their opinions.  Work is also being done to enhance the GLOBEC website.  A GLOBEC Who’s Who will be added. This will be an alphabetized searchable data base for people that were or are involved with GLOBEC.  You will be able to search by key words like SSC Member, etc. The present SSC members are on the data base.  Others will be added. 

The publications data base is also being worked on.  The question was addressed as to how much authority should be give to authors to update the data base of manuscripts that have been assigned a GLOBEC manuscript number.  These numbers are assigned once the manuscript has been accepted for publication.  It was decided that the author will not have the ability to update the data base. 

A new project that will start this coming year will be the Spotlight on GLOBEC.  Linda Lagle will take the lead on this.  Twice a year there will be a high profile description of a scientist and their research on the webpage. 

The question of whether or not a GLOBEC news letter should be developed was discussed.  Dale noted that it is a good suggestion and that it was something that was done in the past.  The news letter was discontinued because it was felt that the website could perform the same function. If published, should a news letter be in a hard copy or electronic form.  The benefits were discussed, but no decision was made.

Dale’s thanked everyone for coming to the Fall SSC Meeting. A list of action items will be emailed to everyone. 

The meeting adjourned at 1530.