A WGCCC Workshop on Cod and Future Climate Change was held 17-20 June 2008 at the ICES headquarters with 16 participants from 6 countries including climatologists, physical oceanographers, and fisheries scientists. Presentations were made on cod dynamics that can be used in generating the impacts on cod of given climate change and fishing scenarios. Progress was reported in predicting changes in climate at decadal scales and shorter, but high uncertainty still exists for long-term climate scenarios from Global Circulation Models (GCMs). This in turn has delayed producing reasonable regional climate scenarios through downscaling from the GCMs needed for impact studies.
Given present estimates of future warming, cod production is expected to decrease in the south with the possibility of stock extinctions, while in the north production is expected to increase and their distribution spread farther north, but these results and their rate of change will depend upon fishing intensity.
Source: ICES
