Copernicus Service catalogue

This application explores the thermal suitability for selected fish species habitats over the world’s oceans and inner seas, based on CMIP5 climate projections (bias-adjusted to ERA5) from 10 Global Circulation Models.

The interactive maps show habitat-specific thermal suitability averages alongside sea surface temperature for 20-year time frames (1981-2000 (historical), 2041-2060 (near future), 2061-2080 (mid future), 2081-2100 (far future)) for two climate scenarios: the Representative Concentration Pathways RCP4.5 (moderate scenario) and RCP8.5 (pessimistic scenario) at standard resolution (0.5° x 0.5° ~ 50km x 50km). Thermal suitability for hosting the habitat of selected fish species is calculated based on species-specific thermal climate envelopes (i.e. species preferences in terms of SST) originating from the Aquamaps habitat models (Kesner-Reyes et al., 2012) - see documentation for more information.

You can use this application to visualise thermal suitability for 14 widely commercially relevant fish species and sea surface temperature based on annual, summer (June, July and August) and winter (December, January, February) means. With the selection of a marine and coastal ecoregion (The International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) European ecoregions and the Marine Ecoregion of the World (MEOW) global coastal ecoregions) you can view a time series of the selected variable for the period 1981-2100 for both RCPs.

Once the species selection has been made, the thermal suitability map also provides the historical suitable thermal regions (as a red dotted line) for that species, allowing comparison between future reference periods and historical period in a single map. A suitability cut-off value of 0.5 has been chosen as a representative threshold to compare suitable and unsuitable regions.

User-selectable parameters

• Season: select the season of interest for exploring sea surface temperatures and associated fish habitat suitability.
• Regions: select the ocean regions to explore for fish habitat suitability. Must be one of:
  • Marine Ecoregions of the World (MEOW) - global
  • International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) - Europe only
• Variable: select the data visualised in the interactive map - either sea surface temperature or thermal suitability.
• Fish species: select the species of fish for which to explore habitat suitability.