They are:

1. A concerted effort to gather, store and analyse previously and presently collected marine environmental data (e.g. common open access database and annual Pan-European reporting based on national contributions);

2. Identifying the nature and rate of consequences of climate change in European marine and coastal waters; this will require the maintainance of sustained monitoring efforts and use of new technologies to increase their spatial and temporal resolution;

3. Predicting the consequences of climate change for our marine environment; this will require the development and measurement of parameters.

4. Predicting the response and feedback of marine environments and ecosystems to climate change which would require the improvement of regional climate models and the development of biophysical models;

5. Predicting the impact on climate change on the distribution of marine organisms and on marine food webs; this will require the inclusion of knowledge on species' physiology, bioenergetics and behaviour in biophysical and ecosystem models.

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Contact: Issam Ahmed
iahmed@esf.org
European Science Foundation
2-Mar-2007