Building Climate Change Resilience – How can ocean numerical models help?

Dr Fayçal Kessouri
Department of Biogeochemistry
Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP)

Ocean acidification (OA), hypoxia (H), and warming are projected to have profound impacts on marine ecosystems and resources of the California coast. These large-scale climatic stressors interact with local circulation and anthropogenic stressors, such as nutrient loading, to exacerbate conditions. However, understanding of the relative attribution of global-to-local stressors requires a numerical ocean model that can resolve the full spatial and temporal scales of the mechanistic linkages between drivers and ecosystem consequences. In this talk, I will (1) describe the development and validation of a coupled physical, biogeochemical and lower trophic ecosystem model that is foundational to my research, (2) present findings on the key drivers of coastal eutrophication and its implications for aerobic and calcifier habitats, (3) discuss ongoing work to disentangle the relative contribution of natural variability and climate change and (4) review how the model is informing management actions, including evaluating water quality management options to increase local resilience of coastal ecosystem to climate change and testing the effect of marine carbon dioxide removal technologies.