• Acronym: WG 29
• Parent Committee: POC, BIO
• Term: Oct. 2011 - 2015
• Co-Chairs:
  Chan Joo Jang (Korea)
  Enrique Curchitser (USA)

With the realization that physically-based future climate projections are the starting point for many socio-economic impact and adaptation considerations to future climate change and that global climate models, although they capture large scale climate behaviour, have limitations for regional assessments due to their coarse spatial resolutions, a working group is proposed to assess state-of-the-art regional climate modeling efforts, their implications for regional ecosystem studies and to further their development in the North Pacific Ocean and its marginal seas.

1. Assemble a comprehensive review of existing regional climate modeling efforts;
2. Assess the requirements for regional ecosystem modeling studies (e.g., how to downscale the biogeochemistry);
3. Continue the development of RCM implementations in the North Pacific and its marginal seas;
4. Convene special sessions and inter-sessional workshops dedicated to the RCM topic;
5. Publish report and/or review paper on best practices for regional coupled modeling;
6. Establish connections between PICES and climate organizations (e.g., CLIVAR) and global climate modeling centers (e.g., NCAR, JAMSTEC, CCCMA);
7. Collaborate with other PICES expert groups such as WG-27, SICCME and the FUTURE Advisory Panels possibly by producing “Outlooks”.
8. Publish a final report summarizing results.

Linkages to the FUTURE Science Plan:

1. What determines an ecosystem’s intrinsic resilience and vulnerability to natural and anthropogenic forcing?
2. How do ecosystems respond to natural and anthropogenic forcing, and how might they change in the future?
3. How do human activities affect coastal ecosystems and how are societies affected by changes in these ecosystems?