Co-Convenors: Jack Barth (USA), James Christian (Canada), Enrique Curchitser (USA), Chan Joo Jang (Korea) and Angelica Pena (Canada)

Invited Speakers:
Jason Holt (National Oceanography Centre, UK)
William Merryfield (Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Environment Canada)

The North Pacific Ocean experiences change on a range of timescales, and is among the most difficult regions of the world ocean in which to detect secular climate trends associated with anthropogenic forcing against the background of natural variability. Understanding impacts on ecosystems and the human communities dependent on them requires understanding of the magnitudes of climate variability and change. Sustained observations of past and present states, modeling of future states with global climate models (GCMs), and downscaling of GCM projections to the regional scale are all key components of the scientific effort to understand impacts and inform adaptation efforts. Downscaling efforts are likely to include a variety of methods, both statistical and dynamical, including high-resolution regional ocean circulation models with embedded ecosystem/biogeochemical models,
statistical models relating local population statistics to climate forcing or climate indices, and multi-species models forced by temperature or oxygen anomalies from regional or global models.