Effects of climate change on advective fluxes in high latitude regions, May, 2012

IMBER workshop sponsored by ESSAS and ICED on "Effects of climate change on advective fluxes in high latitude regions" (W4, 14 May 2012)

Convenors:
Ken Drinkwater (Institute of marine Research, Norway)
George Hunt (University of Washington, USA)
Eugene Murphy (British Antarctic Survey, UK)
Jinping Zhao (Ocean University of China, PR China)

This 1-day workshop will briefly review the advection of water masses within and between polar and sub-polar regions and their driving mechanisms. It will also review the role of advection on the ecology of these high latitude regions, including heat and nutrient fluxes as well as the advection of flora and fauna (Click here for more details about workshop's background). The major objective of the workshop, however, is to develop likely scenarios of these advective fluxes under climate change. Comparative studies of the responses in the Arctic and Antarctic regions are also of interest. To achieve these objectives we plan to bring together atmospheric scientists, climatologists, biogeochemists, physical and biological oceanographers, ecologists, and fisheries scientists who will use a combination of conceptual, statistical and numerical models studies. The workshop will also receive input from the ESSAS-sponsored Theme Session on “Arctic-Subarctic Interaction” to be held at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt Lake City in February 2012 and the ICED Sentinel meeting on “Southern Ocean Ecosystem Change and Future Projections” to be held in Hobart in early May 2012. The workshop will consist of a few focused invited talks with significant discussion time to address the main topic, the expected future high latitude circulation patterns and their ecological effects.

The primary outcomes of the workshop aim to be:

1. a paper on the future physical, chemical and biological fluxes in high latitude regions under climate change;
2. identification of the gaps in our knowledge about these advective processes and development of recommendations for future research to address these gaps;
3. discussions on the formation of a Working Group under IMBER to compare the structure and function of sub-polar and polar ecosystems for the Arctic and Antarctic.