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Thomas Frölicher is co-author with a team of researchers on a study analyzing the impact that ceasing atmospheric CO2 emissions could have on global warming. They show that within five decades, temperature increases become essentially zero if emissions are kept within the global human “carbon budget” set within the IPCC AR5.

You can now watch a series of presentations given by Nereus Program research fellows describing their work in Nereus Program’s “Predicting Future Oceans” book. It is an encapsulation of a decade’s worth of ocean research done by Nereus Program, made freely available for the public to watch on YouTube.

Principal investigator Thomas Frölicher is a co-author on an open access study recently published in Biogeosciences, entitled “Is deoxygenation detectable before warming in the thermocline?”

Thomas Frölicher is a co-author on a new open access paper published in Nature, “Global vulnerability of marine mammals to global warming”. You can read a short summary and access it here.

Director (science) William Cheung is a co-author with others on a new study published in PLoS ONE, “Potential socioeconomic impacts from ocean acidification and climate change effects on Atlantic Canadian Fisheries.”

Principal investigator Malin Pinsky and research fellows Becca Selden and Zoë Kitchel are co-authors on a new publication in Annual Reviews, entitled “Climate-Driven Shifts in Marine Species Ranges: Scaling from Organisms to Communities”.

Thomas Froelicher recently received the Theodor Kocher Prize, awarded to the best junior faculty researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

December 8, 2019 | Climate ChangeOceanography

Lead author Hubert du Pontavice and co-authors Didier Gascuel, Gabriel Reygondeau, Aurore Maureaud, and William Cheung recently published an article in Global Change Biology – “Climate change undermines the global functioning of marine food webs”.

Today, the landmark “Special Report on Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate” (SROCC) is being presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at COP25. Nereus Program director (science) William Cheung and principal investigator Thomas Froelicher are authors on the SROCC report.

Nereus director (science) William Cheung (UBC) and Thomas Frölicher (University of Bern) are co-authors on the newly released Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) Summary for Policymakers (SPM). It was approved and presented at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on September 25, 2019.

Nereus alumnus Colleen Petrik (Texas A&M University) and Charles Stock (NOAA) are co-authors on a new paper in the journal Progress in Oceanography. They investigate how dominant factors influence the global distribution and functionality of certain commercially important fishes.

September 22, 2019 | EcologyOceanography

The final Nippon Foundation Nereus Ocean Science Conference was recently held at Princeton University in New Jersey. Nereus Program research fellows, principal investigators, alumni, research associates and guests presented their research and reflected on the culmination of a decade of interdisciplinary research, and what the future holds for the oceans and society.

‘Predicting Future Oceans: Sustainability of Ocean and Human Systems Amidst Global Environmental Change’ is now available. It contains contributions from previous and current Nereus research fellows, associates and Principal Investigators, and covers a diverse span of ocean topics that include marine ecology, biodiversity, economics, fisheries management, seafood supply, climate change and many more.

Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor (UBC) and director (science) William Cheung (UBC) are co-authors on a recent publication that models how changing environmental conditions and climate may influence future Pacific sardine distribution in Northwest Mexico, and what it may mean for marine ecosystems and regional fishers.

An updated summary of Colin Thackray (Harvard University), Elsie Sunderland (Harvard University), et al.’s paper that models how climate change and overfishing are contributing to the bioaccumulation of neurotoxin methylmercury (MeHg) in top ocean predators.

Leah Burrows (Science and Technology Communications Officer) of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) wrote an article about Elsie Sunderland’s and Colin Thackray’s recent publication on methylmercury bioaccumulation in marine predators for The Harvard Gazette.

Nereus research fellow Harriet Harden-Davies (University of Wollongong/ANCORS) and Rashid Sumaila (UBC) are co-authors on a new paper published in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems that identifies necessary measures to restore ocean health for future generations.

In her new publication, Nereus Fellow Sarah Roberts (Ph.D. Candidate at Duke University) finds that several fish species’ responses to ocean warming in the North Atlantic depend on the phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

July 25, 2019 | EcologyOceanography

Nereus’s Tyler Eddy, William Cheung, Miranda Jones, Derek Tittensor, and Charles Stock are co-authors on a recent article that projects a 5% decline, on average, in global marine biomass for every 1 degree (C) of warming. They did this by combining several different types of models, rather than using a single-model approach.

Nereus director (science) William Cheung (UBC) and research associate Rashid Sumaila (UBC) are co-authors on an article recently published in the journal Marine Policy – ‘Climate change impact on Canada’s Pacific marine ecosystem: The current state of knowledge’. They conducted a literature review to investigate currently known and projected impacts of climate change on Canada’s Pacific marine ecosystem.

Nereus research associate Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor (UBC) and director (science) William Cheung (UBC) are co-authors on a recent paper published in the open access journal PLoS ONE that uses metadata to evaluate the current state of knowledge of the ocean, using Mexico as a case study.

Nereus Program blog on the Sargassum mass-bloom of 2018 is referenced in a piece in the Riviera Maya News that aims to clarify the severity of the bloom on beaches in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

Nereus alumnus Rebecca Asch (East Carolina University) writes a blog about her upcoming publication in the journal Global Change Biology, which focuses on how climate change is influencing seasonality, thereby creating critical mismatches in the timing between fish spawning and phytoplankton blooms in marine food webs.

Nereus Research Associate Colette Wabnitz (University of British Columbia) wrote a blog about the Sargassum mass bloom event that occurred in 2018, and how it impacted countries throughout the Caribbean. She discusses the origins of Sargassum, factors that trigger mass blooms, and what can be done about it.

Nereus Fellow Tyler Eddy (University of South Carolina) writes about his recent trips to attend climate change impacts workshops at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Potsdam, Germany and Institute for Marine Science in Barcelona, Spain. While there he worked with other climate change impacts modellers on ways to get different models to interact with each other.

Nereus fellows Robert Blasiak (Stockholm Resilience Center) and Harriet Harden-Davies (University of Wollongong) both appear in The New York Times article ‘What 13,000 Patents Involving the DNA of Sea Life Tell Us About the Future’. Both fellows attended the United Nations debate earlier in September, about the future global legal framework for genetic resources on the high seas, and were interviewed for the article.

September 18, 2018 | OceanographyBiodiversity

Is the ocean a biological continuum or are there distinct ecological units? Nereus researchers are delving deep into this question, exploring how climate-change will change the answer and untangling what it will all mean for the ocean resources humans rely on across the globe.

I think what inspires me most about this group is that it values a diverse array of approaches to research. We reward the type of disciplinary flexibility and freedom that most academic organizations tend to smother. Nereus lets us be who we want to be, not who they want us to be

The rapid development of fisheries in the 1950’s facilitated declines in predator biomass, overexploitation, collapse of fish stocks, and degradation of marine habitats. A new PLOS ONE paper investigates past changes in trophic functioning of marine ecosystems cause by human-induced changes in species assemblages by applying an ecosystem approach to fisheries.

August 24, 2017 | FisheriesOceanography

The study “Biogeochemical regions of the Mediterranean Sea: an objective multidimensional and multivariate environmental approach” was recently published in Progress in Oceanography with Nereus Fellow Gabriel Reygondeau (UBC) as the lead author.

December 7, 2016 | Oceanography

From November 2 to 13, the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) held their annual meeting in San Diego, USA. The meeting celebrated the 25th anniversary of PICES with the theme of looking at the past 25 years and imagining the next 25.

The Nereus Program was created to look at ocean questions that need input from experts on a range of topics from around the world. This past May 30 to June 3, nearly 50 of these experts gathered at the University of British Columbia for the Nereus Program Annual General Meeting.

Nereus Fellow Andres Cisneros-Montemayor (UBC) attended the OceanCanada Partnership Meeting, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, from May 24 to 27.

June 8, 2016 | Oceanography

Floating marine species and objects can drift from one area in the surface ocean to any other spot across the globe in less than a decade, finds a new study published in Nature Communications by Nereus Program alumnus James Watson, currently a research scientist at Stockholm Resilience Centre.

“Seasonal phytoplankton blooms in the North Atlantic linked to the overwintering strategies of copepods,” co-authored by Nereus Fellow Rebecca Asch (Princeton University), was recently published in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene.

Climate change is expected to have major impacts on the ocean, the species that live there, and the people who rely it for their food and livelihood. Since the beginning of the 20th century, CO2 emissions from human activities have altered physical and chemical properties of the ocean. The ocean has become warmer and, in some areas, less oxygenated, which has caused changes in the productivity and distribution of marine species.

My mother is an abstract expressionist painter who creates art using oil paints, acrylics, watercolors, and pen and ink. My father has a Masters degree in physics and spent most of his career working as a software engineer. As a result, I have born witness to many conversations about the intersection between art and science throughout my life.

February 24, 2016 | Oceanography