Abstract
Abstract. Model intercomparison studies in the climate and Earth sciences communities have been crucial to building credibility and coherence for future projections. They have quantified variability among models, spurred model development, contrasted within- and among-model uncertainty, assessed model fits to historical data, and provided ensemble projections of future change under specified scenarios. Given the speed and magnitude of anthropogenic change in the marine environment and the consequent effects on food security, biodiversity, marine industries, and society, the time is ripe for similar comparisons among models of fisheries and marine ecosystems. Here, we describe the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project protocol version 1.0 (Fish-MIP v1.0), part of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP), which is a cross-sectoral network of climate impact modellers. Given the complexity of the marine ecosystem, this class of models has substantial heterogeneity of purpose, scope, theoretical underpinning, processes considered, parameterizations, resolution (grain size), and spatial extent. This heterogeneity reflects the lack of a unified understanding of the marine ecosystem and implies that the assemblage of all models is more likely to include a greater number of relevant processes than any single model. The current Fish-MIP protocol is designed to allow these heterogeneous models to be forced with common Earth System Model (ESM) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) outputs under prescribed scenarios for historic (from the 1950s) and future (to 2100) time periods; it will be adapted to CMIP phase 6 (CMIP6) in future iterations. It also describes a standardized set of outputs for each participating Fish-MIP model to produce. This enables the broad characterization of differences between and uncertainties within models and projections when assessing climate and fisheries impacts on marine ecosystems and the services they provide. The systematic generation, collation, and comparison of results from Fish-MIP will inform an understanding of the range of plausible changes in marine ecosystems and improve our capacity to define and convey the strengths and weaknesses of model-based advice on future states of marine ecosystems and fisheries. Ultimately, Fish-MIP represents a step towards bringing together the marine ecosystem modelling community to produce consistent ensemble medium- and long-term projections of marine ecosystems.
Highlights
The ocean provides nearly half of global primary production (Field et al, 1998), hosts 25 % of eukaryotic species (Mora et al, 2011), provides 11 % of global animal protein consumed by humans (FAO, 2014), and is a source of livelihoods for millions (Sumaila et al, 2012)
The current Fish-MIP protocol is designed to allow these heterogeneous models to be forced with common Earth System Model (ESM) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) outputs under prescribed scenarios for historic and future time periods; it will be adapted to CMIP phase 6 (CMIP6) in future iterations
As examples of approaches taken by individual FishMIP models, the EcoOcean model applies fishing as an effort term based on the Sea Around Us Project (SAUP) effort database (Anticamara et al, 2011; Christensen et al, 2015; Watson et al, 2013), the Dynamic Bioclimate Envelope Model (DBEM) model uses an alternate catch reconstruction database (Watson, 2017), BOATS has a dynamic bioeconomic approach using SAUP catch price data to simulate spatially resolved changes in fishing effort over time based on individual fishers attempting to optimize their outcomes (Carozza et al, 2017), and SS-DBEM represents maximum sustainable yield without explicitly calculating fishing mortality (Fernandes et al, 2016, 2017; Mullon et al, 2016) using SAUP data supplemented by other sources
Summary
The ocean provides nearly half of global primary production (Field et al, 1998), hosts 25 % of eukaryotic species (Mora et al, 2011), provides 11 % of global animal protein consumed by humans (FAO, 2014), and is a source of livelihoods for millions (Sumaila et al, 2012). The Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP; www.isimip.org) was set up to enhance consistency among climate impact studies across different sectors, including food production, ecosystems and biodiversity, freshwater availability, and human health among others (Huber et al, 2014; Schellnhuber et al, 2013) It does so through providing common climate and socio-economic input data and defining a common set of simulation experiments (Warszawski et al, 2013). Unlike in the physical and chemical sciences, where there is often clarity about fundamental representations and processes driven by underlying theory or experimentation, the development of marine ecosystem models has been approached from many perspectives, reflecting differences in scientific and management objectives, theoretical frameworks, modelling structures and parameterizations, input data needs, resolutions (spatial, temporal, vertical, process, and taxonomic), and process complexity They include differing assumptions of top-down, bottom-up, or mixed trophic control, the role of species as opposed to trophic groups, functional groups, or www.geosci-model-dev.net/11/1421/2018/. The lessons learned here apply to other marine model comparisons and will help to guide the development of new models to investigate patterns of change in the future oceans
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