The goal of the ESSAS Program is to compare, quantify and predict the impact of climate variability on the productivity and sustainability of Sub-Arctic marine ecosystems.
Since its acceptance as a GLOBEC Regional Program in 2005, ESSAS has held many activities. They began with an Open Science Meeting in May 2005, hosted by PICES in Victoria, B.C. that focused on examining past and ongoing studies of the effects of climate variability in the sub-arctic seas. ESSAS has also sponsored an Annual Science Meeting (ASM) containing one to three workshops on subjects ranging from methods for selecting the most appropriate of the IPCC models for forecasting regional climates in the sub-arctic seas, development of methods for downscaling regional climate scenarios for driving regional ocean models, examination of the role of seasonal sea ice cover in sub-arctic seas and examination of the role of advection in the marine ecosystems of the sub-arctic.
The 2005 Open Science Meeting resulted in the publication of a special issue of Deep-Sea Research II with 32 papers from the conference. Papers on methods for the selection of appropriate IPCC models, downscaling from global to regional climate prediction and models of past and future sea ice cover are in progress, as are papers on “aggregation hotspots” and climate forcing and ecological thresholds. It is the intention of ESSAS that workshops set a goal of producing one or more papers for submission to the refereed literature. Attendance at Annual Science Meetings has ranged from about 35 to over 70 participants; about 225 scientists attended the Open Science Symposium.
With the ending of GLOBEC in 2009, ESSAS has joined IMBER.
Working Groups
ESSAS presently has four Working Groups. These sponsor annual workshops and generate science initiatives. They include:
Working Group 1 on Regional Climate Prediction: The goal of Working Group 1 is to provide quantitative estimates of the magnitude and uncertainty of future climate change for the ESSAS regions, and the frequency distribution of natural variability
Working Group 2 on Biophysical Coupling: The goal of Working Group 2 is to determine how climate-driven variability in physical conditions and processes in the ocean will affect the organisms that make up marine ecosystems and thus the transfer of energy and material through sub-arctic marine ecosystems.
Working Group 3 on Modeling Ecosystem Response: The goal of Working Group 3 is to develop conceptual, mechanistic/process, statistical/empirical, and simulation models to facilitate comparison of ESSAS ecosystems and to forecast the impacts of climate change on ecosystem structure and function in multiple ESSAS ecosystems.
Working Group 4 on Gadoid - Crustacean Interactions: The goal of Working Group 4 is to assess the effects of ocean climate variation and fishing on the interactions between gadoid fishes and crustaceans by conducting a comparative study across multiple sub-arctic marine ecosystems.
National and International Programs
In addition to the four Working Groups, ESSAS is affiliated with national programs, many of which include extensive field programs, in Japan, China (via IPY), the United States, Iceland, and Norway, and collaborative international programs between Canada and Norway (NORCAN) and the U.S. and Norway (MENU, MENUII). ESSAS is also the lead organization of the International Polar Year (IPY) consortium, Ecosystem Studies of Subarctic and Arctic Regions (ESSAR). ESSAS has sponsored or co-sponsored theme sessions and symposia with PICES, and through its affiliated program, Marine Ecosystems of Norway and the US (MENU), sponsored a full day Theme Session at the ICES Annual Science Meeting in Helsinki that resulted in a special volume of Progress in Oceanography with 16 papers. Countries with members on the ESSAS SSC include Korea, Japan, Russia, the United States, Canada, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark.
