Cod and future climate change

Many of the oceanic regions currently inhabited by Atlantic cod are predicted to undergo significant warming as a result of climate change. In recent years, much of the North Atlantic has experienced warming. Managers, politicians, and the general public have increasingly been asking what will be the impacts of future climate change. Such information for cod and the marine ecosystems they inhabit has been limited. Indeed, the few published studies have usually considered the response of individual species to increased warming without considering other components of the marine ecosystem, such as their prey or predators. However, climate change is expected to affect both the structure and function of marine ecosystems. Therefore, more plausible impact scenarios require us to consider species as part of the ecosystem. The Workshop on Cod and Future Climate Change (WKCFCC) in June 2008 built on the increased understanding gained through the ICES/GLOBEC Cod and Climate Change (CCC) programme, including past workshops, plus other research on the effects of climate variability on cod and its supporting ecosystem. The 16 participants from six countries (Denmark, Germany, Norway, Russia, UK, and USA), plus the ICES/GLOBEC Coordinator, are acknowledged as contributors to this report and are listed at the end of the report.