Fri, October 9, 2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM See description. This is part of the IOF seminar series
Speaker: Dr. Thomas Froelicher, University of Bern
Extreme events, i.e., periods of normally rare situations when a system is far outside its norms, are well known to severely impact organisms and entire ecosystems on land. Yet, in comparison, our understanding of the hazards of such extreme events in the ocean and their threats to ocean life is generally poor. The best understood risks are marine heatwaves, some of which have negatively impacted marine organisms and ecosystems throughout the global ocean over the past few decades. During the first part of my talk, I will review our current understanding of such events, starting with marine heatwaves and extending the analysis to extreme events associated with ocean acidification. I will show that with the trend in warming and acidification projected to continue for decades, such extreme events are likely to intensify, occur more often, persist for longer and extend over larger regions. Of particular concern are compound events, i.e. when conditions are extreme concurrently for multiple parameters, a condition expected to become more prevalent as well. Traditional analysis of ocean extreme events tend to focus on one ecosystem stressor, such as temperature and acidity, at a time, potentially leading to underestimation of risk, as the process that cause extreme events often interact. During the second part of my talk, I will present a first global assessment of compound extreme events in multiple ocean ecosystem drivers, identify hot-spot regions and driving mechanisms by using a large ensemble simulations of comprehensive fully coupled Earth system models.
Please RSVP at: http://bit.ly/IOFseminars