The impacts of marine climate change and variability in the shelf seas

Jonathan Tinker (MOHC); Jason Holt (NOCL); Icarus Allen (PML); Stephen Dye (CEFAS). 

The shelf seas are of economic, environmental and cultural importance. They support industries as diverse as fishing, oil and gas, shipping and aquaculture. There are a number of UK and European policy to manage and protect them with some that explicitly include the effects of anthropogenic climate change. 

The shelf is susceptible to a number of types of events that can impact human and natural systems. Some have a physical impact, particularly in terms of coastal flooding, such as storm surges and extreme wave events. Others lead to impact within the marine ecosystems, which can be caused by changing temperatures. 

In the present day there can be significant climate variability that leads to year-to-year changes and decade-to-decade changes in the occurrence of such marine events. Furthermore, climate change and lead to changes in the mean state, and the climate variability, both of which can change the occurrence of events currently considered extreme. For example, both changes in the mean sea level (sea level rise) changes in the extreme sea level (related to changes in storm surges and wave climatology) can change the likelihood of coastal flooding. 

In this session we welcome presentations on a wide range of marine impacts focused within the shelf seas. We invite talks projecting how they may change under with climate change into the future, there present day variability, and on likely changes within the near future.

Examples of topics include, but are not limited to:

• Projected changes in: regional mean sea level, storm surge climatology; wave climatology; the physical environment (temperature, salinity); the marine ecosystem within the shelf seas.
• Current climate variability within the shelf seas.
• Seasonal and decadal prediction within the  shelf seas.