Principal Investigator(s): (Include name, affiliation and email address):

• Main Authors: Dr. Richard, T. Barber
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2006
• Subjects: Arctic; Bering Sea; Pacific; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.416.4153; http://doc.nprb.org/web/emc/nprb_modeling_prjs/608 Chai, Chao, McWilliams, Nghiem, de Charon.pdf

Summary of Proposed Work (250 words or less): To contribute to the development of an Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (IERP) for the Bering Sea, we propose to perform retrospective (1955-2005) and future (2005-2055) model analyses of the Bering Sea integrated ice ecosystem response to forcing by climate and the adjacent North Pacific and Arctic Oceans. The objective is to identify the climatic, oceanic and ice processes that regulate timing, quantity and quality of the Bering Sea spring bloom, which is essential for recruitment of a strong year class of young fish. The retrospective analysis, based on actual observations, will focus on variability in the seasonal, annual and decadal forcing that affects ecosystem properties. The future analysis will be forced by output from ocean/atmosphere models forced with (and without) increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The high resolution ROMS physical model for the Bering Sea will interface with a sea ice model as well as the CoSINE ecosystem model, a 12 component model used by our group in previous studies in the equatorial and North Pacific Ocean. Adding an independent ice model and direct ice observations to the existing ROMS CoSINE model analyses will provide greatly improved predictive understanding of the