As marine resources and coastal communities are increasingly impacted by rapidly changing oceans, the Climate, Ecosystems, and Fisheries Initiative offers a path forward.
Climate change is driving rapid changes in U.S. marine and Great Lakes ecosystems. The impacts range from devastating marine heatwaves to shifts in the distribution and abundance of commercial and recreational fish stocks. These changes are already impacting these important resources and the people, businesses, and coastal communities that depend on them.
NOAA Fisheries is committed to helping resource managers, businesses and coastal communities build resilience and adapt to changing ocean environments. To be successful, we need up-to-date information on what’s coming, what’s at risk, and how best to prepare and respond.
NOAA’s Climate, Ecosystems, and Fisheries Initiative (CEFI) is designed to address these needs and transform how we approach and respond to changing ocean and Great Lakes conditions. CEFI is a cross-NOAA effort to build a nationwide decision support system to help reduce impacts and increase resilience. For the first time, NOAA will regularly provide robust forecasts of future ocean ecosystem conditions, information on what’s at risk, and advice on best strategies for resilience and adaptation.
“The CEFI is the product of extraordinary cross-NOAA collaboration to meet the urgent need for action in the face of rapidly changing oceans,” says Cisco Werner, NOAA Fisheries Chief Science Advisor and Director of Scientific Programs. “Working with many partners, the CEFI System will provide critical information to help the nation’s fisheries and fishing communities adapt to a changing environment.”
The CEFI system will regularly deliver powerful new early warnings, forecasts, and longer term projections of future ocean and Great Lakes conditions. At the core are high-resolution regional ocean models developed by NOAA scientists and partners at NOAA Research’s oceanographic and physical sciences laboratories. Thanks to advances in our understanding of the earth’s climate and ocean systems, these models are now able to produce robust, high-resolution, short-term forecasts and longer term projections of likely future ocean conditions.