Potential predictability of forage, pelagics and demersals biomass

Abstract

With the emergence of predictive skills of climate variability, we currently stand at the horizon of being able to forecast marine ecosystems. However, the assessment of the capacity to predict high trophic levels of marine ecosystems has been rarely investigated. Here, we investigate predictability of fish biomass integrated by spatially explicit mechanistic model of fish with three functional types. We also evaluate the bottom-up biophysical drivers of fish that are predicted by decadal prediction outcomes from an Earth system model, initialized through forced ocean- sea ice simulations. We found that temperature drivers have longer predictability ~8 years while biological drivers have predictabilities within 1-2 years. The fish biomasses have skillful predictability within 2 years globally, extended more years regionally. These findings build upon prior research in evaluating the predictability of bottom-up drivers on fish, potentially illuminating a path towards operating forecast systems of living marine resources.