Human-made global change will have significant impacts at regional and coastal scales on marine systems, dependent socio-economies and ocean services. These can strongly interact with regional and local human-activity induces pressures such as fishing, pollution, and eutrophication. The challenges of understanding climate and ocean change at European and global scales require expertise exceeding that available from one single nation. CE2COAST (Downscaling Climate and Ocean Change to Services: Thresholds and Opportunities) adds transnational value by strategically combining national expertise across the disciplines of oceanography, marine biogeochemistry, marine ecology, data and database management, earth system, marine and ecosystem modelling and science and policy communication.
The primary novelty of CE2COAST will be an observation-driven synthesis of statistical and dynamical downscaling methodology. The higher process resolution and detailed system representations are tailored address environmental pressures and services in regional and coastal domains. The researchers will analyze fit-for-purpose (driven) marine datasets from existing and new case study observations of ocean climate, biogeochemistry and ecosystems.
CE2COAST will deliver benchmarked single and ensemble Earth System Model simulations. These will be downscaled to study regional and coastal ocean domains by hindcasting changes in the physical, biogeochemical and climatic fields over the past 40 years and projecting them up to 80 years into the future. This will enable CE2COAST to deliver estimates of natural and forced variability of oceanic processes as well as regional and local mean states and trends of pressures on ocean services.
A capacity to understand and predict these impacts on regional seas and coasts is essential for developing robust strategies for adaptation and mitigation. To inform adaptation policies to oceanic and coastal change, CE2COAST will deliver key knowledge to end-users through a range of dissemination activities. Stakeholder clusters will enable participation in decision making throughout the project and facilitate co-production of science products tailored to specific scientific, management, regulatory, industrial and ecosystem service assessments. Crucially, CE2COAST has a strong educational and early researcher focus with a dedicated postdoctoral position. Plans include to develop a Continuous Professional Development module and to organise a summer school.
To combat the consequences of ocean change CE2COAST will pursue strategic coherence of national observation strategies where collective learning and slipstreaming leads to faster progress, ultimately delivering an integrated European evaluation of marine health and challenges. As such, CE2COAST has the potential to contribute knowledge for the allevation of economic, scientific and social disparity across Europe. The project's targets for knowledge transfer and information sharing include JPI Climate, JPI Oceans, IPCC, UN Sustainable development goals, IPBES, UN DECADES, MSP, CFP, MSFD, WFD and the Arctic Council.
Coordinator: Prof. Richard Bellerby
Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Norway
Consortium
Norwegian Institute for Water Research, NIVA, NORWAY
NORCE Norwegian Research Centre AS, NORCE, NORWAY
Université de Liège, ULiège, BELGIUM
Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement, IRD, FRANCE
Marine Institute, MI, IRELAND
National University of Ireland Galway, NUIG, IRELAND
Marine and Freshwater Institute, MFRI, ICELAND
Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, CMCC, ITALY
Latvian Institute of Aquatic Ecology, Agency of Daugavpils University, LHEI, LATVIA
University of Latvia, UL, LATVIA
Instituto Superior Técnico - University of Lisbon, IST, PORTUGAL
Atlantic International Research Centre, AIR CENTRE, PORTUGAL
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission - UNESCO, IOC-UNESCO