Marine environmental prediction through improved biogeochemical models

Anthropogenic perturbations of the global carbon and nitrogen cycles are altering fundamental physical and chemical properties of the ocean including water temperature, vertical stratification, circulation, pH, nutrient regimes and oxygen levels. It is expected that these changes in environmental conditions will strongly affect planktonic communities (which support the marine food web and play a major role in regulating the ocean’s uptake of carbon) and higher trophic level species like fish, bivalves and crustaceans (which are of commercial importance). Numerical models that accurately simulate physical, chemical and biological processes are a key tool for describing current and future environmental ocean conditions; however, a paucity of detailed ocean observations has severely limited efforts to critically evaluate models and improve their realism. To date there is no consensus on an appropriate biogeochemical model structure, and model projections of how ocean conditions will change in the coming century vary dramatically. Furthermore, model projections of future conditions (including those of the IPCC) rely on global models that lack the spatial resolution to adequately represent coastal regions (defined here to include continental shelves, i.e. regions with water depths