The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was awarded a competive federal grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop a forecast system that will predict seasonal and year-to-year changes in ocean temperatures on the Northeast U.S. Shelf. Other institutions involved in this project include Stony Brook University (SBU) and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was awarded a competive federal grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop a forecast system that will predict seasonal and year-to-year changes in ocean temperatures on the Northeast U.S. Shelf. Other institutions involved in this project include Stony Brook University (SBU) and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole.
The Northeast shelf—home to a highly productive and commercially important marine ecosystem—is experiencing some of the highest warming rates in the world in recent decades.
"Changes in ocean temperature hugely impacts the living organisms in coastal waters," says Young-Oh Kwon, an assocate scientist in WHOI's Physical Oceanography Department and lead investigator of the new project.
A WHOI team of researchers will tailor the system to meet the needs of NOAA’s NEFSC and evaluate its use for NEFSC’s stock assessments, which help set annual catch limits to prevent overfishing. Current stock assessment forecasts are typically based on fish biology alone.
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Image: Atlantic herring (above) have been under harvested two years in a row in the northeast region, potentially due to warming-driven distribution changes. Source: NOAA
