Dr. Peter Miller

Plymouth Marine Lab, UK

Email: pim@pml.ac.uk

Research interest: Leads research on ocean fronts, their impact upon animal behaviour and potential modulation by climate change. He has innovated a suite of remote sensing algorithms for detecting, simplifying, visualising and quantifying oceanic fronts, and devised a new paradigm in designation of marine protected areas using decadal satellite-detected fronts as a proxy for the abundance of mobile marine animals. He encourages multidisciplinary research through linking front metrics to the foraging ecology of many marine animals, including seabirds, cetaceans, fish and sharks. He has been PI on UK and European research grant and commercial contracts, and he is leading the oceanic front component of the Copernicus Climate Change Service – Marine, Coastal and Fisheries.

Climate change impacts on oceanic fronts: initial results from a satellite and model study

Abstract

Climate change is likely to have a significant impact upon the seas and oceans, affecting oceanic ecosystems and marine and coastal resources, such as natural fisheries, aquaculture, and services, such as tourism. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) is developing relevant climate information to users across European seas and oceans. The Marine, Coastal, and Fisheries component includes monthly projections of changes in the spatial and temporal distribution of ocean fronts. Ocean fronts are recognised to enhance productivity and promote the aggregation of commercial pelagic fish species and top predators, such as sharks and marine mammals. Many ocean front locations depend upon bathymetry, though future currents and weather have the potential to affect the strength and persistence of these features. This dataset will be used to study the potential for climate change to modify productive fishing zones and related marine conservation measures. Fronts are derived from two coupled hydrodynamic and ecosystem models covering the Northeast Atlantic (POLCOMS-ERSEM at 0.1° resolution from 2006

to 2099, and NEMO-ERSEM at 7 km resolution from 2006 to 2049), for two greenhouse gas scenarios. These are compared with oceanic fronts observed using decadal satellite SST and chlorophyll-a datasets. Initial results are presented to highlight the potential application to future fisheries management.