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In the field of ocean observing, the term of “observatory” is often used without a unique meaning. A clear and unified definition of observatory is needed in order to facilitate the communication in a multidisciplinary community, to capitalize on future technological innovations and to support the observatory design based on societal needs. In this paper, we present a general framework to define the next generation Marine OBservatory (MOB), its capabilities and functionalities in an operational context. The MOB consists of four interconnected components or “gears” (observation infrastructure, cyberinfrastructure, support capacity, and knowledge generation engine) that are constantly and adaptively interacting with each other. Therefore, a MOB is a complex infrastructure focused on a specific geographic area with the primary scope to generate knowledge via data synthesis and thereby addressing scientific, societal, or economic challenges. Long-term sustainability is a key MOB feature that should be guaranteed through an appropriate governance. MOBs should be open to innovations and good practices to reduce operational costs and to allow their development in quality and quantity. A deeper biological understanding of the marine ecosystem should be reached with the proliferation of MOBs, thus contributing to effective conservation of ecosystems and management of human activities in the oceans. We provide an actionable model for the upgrade and development of sustained marine observatories producing knowledge to support science-based economic and societal decisions. Refereed 14.A Manual (incl. handbook, guide, cookbook etc) 2018-09-07

Developing enduring capacity to monitor ocean life requires investing in people and their institutions to build infrastructure, ownership, and long-term support networks. International initiatives can enhance access to scientific data, tools and methodologies, and develop local expertise to use them, but without ongoing engagement may fail to have lasting benefit. Linking capacity development and technology transfer to sustained ocean monitoring is a win-win proposition. Trained local experts will benefit from joining global communities of experts who are building the comprehensive Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). This two-way exchange will benefit scientists and policy makers in developing and developed countries. The first step toward the GOOS is complete: identification of an initial set of biological Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) that incorporate the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Essential Biological Variables (EBVs), and link to the physical and biogeochemical EOVs. EOVs provide a globally consistent approach to monitoring where the costs of monitoring oceans can be shared and where capacity and expertise can be transferred globally. Integrating monitoring with existing international reporting and policy development connects ocean observations with agreements underlying many countries’ commitments and obligations, including under SDG 14, thus catalyzing progress toward sustained use of the ocean. Combining scientific expertise with international capacity development initiatives can help meet the need of developing countries to engage in the agreed United Nations (UN) initiatives including new negotiations for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, and the needs of the global community to understand how the ocean is changing. Refereed 14.A Manual (incl. handbook, guide, cookbook etc) 2018-09-25

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This repository contains the data files and R codes used to analyze the data and generate the results for this research article. Nuria Teixidó, Maria Cristina Gambi, Valeriano Parravacini, Kristy Kroeker, Fiorenza Micheli, Sebastien Villéger, Enric Ballesteros (2018) Functional biodiversity loss along natural CO2 gradients. Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07592-1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07592-1 Abstract: The effects of environmental change on biodiversity are still poorly understood. In particular, the consequences of shifts in species composition for marine ecosystem function are largely unknownwe assess the loss of functional diversity, i.e. the range of species biological traits, in benthic marine communities exposed to ocean acidification (OA) by using natural CO2 vent systems. We found that functional richness is greatly reduced with acidification, and that functional loss is more pronounced than the corresponding decrease in taxonomic diversity. In acidified conditions, most organisms accounted for a few functional entities (i.e. unique combination of functional traits), resulting in low functional redundancy. These results suggest that functional richness is not buffered by functional redundancy under OA, even in highly diverse assemblages, such as rocky benthic communities. This research was supported by the National Geographic Society (Window to the Future, Grant No. 9771-15) and the Total Foundation (High-CO2 Seas project, Grant No. BIO-2016-081-4). NT was supported by a Maire Curie- Cofund (FP7-PEOPLE- Marie Curie Bandiera- Cofund, GA No. 600407) and by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (H2020-MSCA- IF- 2015, GA No. 702628).

In this paper we provide an overview of new knowledge on oxygen depletion (hypoxia) and related phenomena in aquatic systems resulting from the EU-FP7 project HYPOX ("In situ monitoring of oxygen depletion in hypoxic ecosystems of coastal and open seas, and landlocked water bodies", http://www.hypox.net). In view of the anticipated oxygen loss in aquatic systems due to eutrophication and climate change, HYPOX was set up to improve capacities to monitor hypoxia as well as to understand its causes and consequences. Temporal dynamics and spatial patterns of hypoxia were analyzed in field studies in various aquatic environments, including the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, Scottish and Scandinavian fjords, Ionian Sea lagoons and embayments, and Swiss lakes. Examples of episodic and rapid (hours) occurrences of hypoxia, as well as seasonal changes in bottom-water oxygenation in stratified systems, are discussed. Geologically driven hypoxia caused by gas seepage is demonstrated. Using novel technologies, temporal and spatial patterns of water-column oxygenation, from basin-scale seasonal patterns to meter-scale sub-micromolar oxygen distributions, were resolved. Existing multidecadal monitoring data were used to demonstrate the imprint of climate change and eutrophication on long-term oxygen distributions. Organic and inorganic proxies were used to extend investigations on past oxygen conditions to centennial and even longer timescales that cannot be resolved by monitoring. The effects of hypoxia on faunal communities and biogeochemical processes were also addressed in the project. An investigation of benthic fauna is presented as an example of hypoxia-devastated benthic communities that slowly recover upon a reduction in eutrophication in a system where naturally occurring hypoxia overlaps with anthropogenic hypoxia. Biogeochemical investigations reveal that oxygen intrusions have a strong effect on the microbially mediated redox cycling of elements. Observations and modeling studies of the sediments demonstrate the effect of seasonally changing oxygen conditions on benthic mineralization pathways and fluxes. Data quality and access are crucial in hypoxia research. Technical issues are therefore also addressed, including the availability of suitable sensor technology to resolve the gradual changes in bottom-water oxygen in marine systems that can be expected as a result of climate change. Using cabled observatories as examples, we show how the benefit of continuous oxygen monitoring can be maximized by adopting proper quality control. Finally, we discuss strategies for state-of-the-art data archiving and dissemination in compliance with global standards, and how ocean observations can contribute to global earth observation attempts.

The Climate SPHINX (Stochastic Physics HIgh resolutioN eXperiments) project is a comprehensive set of ensemble simulations aimed at evaluating the sensitivity of present and future climate to model resolution and stochastic parameterisation. The EC-Earth Earth system model is used to explore the impact of stochastic physics in a large ensemble of 30-year climate integrations at five different atmospheric horizontal resolutions (from 125 up to 16 km). The project includes more than 120 simulations in both a historical scenario (1979–2008) and a climate change projection (2039–2068), together with coupled transient runs (1850–2100). A total of 20.4 million core hours have been used, made available from a single year grant from PRACE (the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and close to 1.5 PB of output data have been produced on SuperMUC IBM Petascale System at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany. About 140 TB of post-processed data are stored on the CINECA supercomputing centre archives and are freely accessible to the community thanks to an EUDAT data pilot project. This paper presents the technical and scientific set-up of the experiments, including the details on the forcing used for the simulations performed, defining the SPHINX v1.0 protocol. In addition, an overview of preliminary results is given. An improvement in the simulation of Euro-Atlantic atmospheric blocking following resolution increase is observed. It is also shown that including stochastic parameterisation in the low-resolution runs helps to improve some aspects of the tropical climate – specifically the Madden–Julian Oscillation and the tropical rainfall variability. These findings show the importance of representing the impact of small-scale processes on the large-scale climate variability either explicitly (with high-resolution simulations) or stochastically (in low-resolution simulations).

Changes in both global and regional mean sea level, and changes in the magnitude of extreme flood heights, are the result of a combination of several distinct contributions most, but not all, of which are associated with climate change. These contributions include effects in the solid earth, gravity field, changes in ocean mass due to ice loss from ice sheets and glaciers, thermal expansion, alterations in ocean circulation driven by climate change and changing freshwater fluxes, and the intensity of storm surges. Due to the diverse range of models required to simulate these systems, the contributions to sea-level change have usually been discussed in isolation rather than in one self-consistent assessment. Focusing on the coastline of northwest Europe, we consider all the processes mentioned above and their relative impact on 21st century regional mean sea levels and the 50-year return flood height. As far as possible our projections of change are derived from process-based models forced by the A1B emissions scenario to provide a self-consistent comparison of the contributions. We address uncertainty by considering both a mid-range and an illustrative high-end combination of the different components. For our mid-range ice loss scenario we find that thermal expansion of seawater is the dominant contributor to change in northwest European sea level by 2100. However, the projected contribution to extreme sea level, due to changes in storminess alone, is in some places significant and comparable to the global mean contribution of thermal expansion. For example, under the A1B emissions scenario, by 2100, change in storminess contributes around 15 cm to the increase in projected height of the 50-year storm surge on the west coast of the Jutland Peninsula, compared with a contribution of around 22 cm due to thermal expansion and a total of 58 cm from all of the contributions we consider. An illustrative combination of our high-end projections suggests increases in the 50-year return level of 86 cm at Sheerness, 95 cm at Roscoff, 106 cm at Esbjerg, and 67cm at Bergen. The notable regional differences between these locations arise primarily from differences in the rates of vertical land movement and changes in storminess.