World Meteorological Organization s3

WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION EC-PORS-4/Doc 8.1.6 EXECUTIVE COUNCIL PANEL OF EXPERTS ON POLAR OBSERVATIONS, Submitted by: R. Stefanski, CLW RESEARCH AND SERVICES Fourth session Date: 28.II.2013

Lanzhou, China, 13-15 March 2013 AGENDA ITEM: 8.1

CAGM CONTRIBUTION TO PORS: WEATHER AND CLIMATE PRODUCTS FOR POLAR FISHERIES

ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED: Activities of JCOMM / CAgM Task Team on Weather, Climate and Fisheries

DECISIONS/ACTIONS REQUIRED: None

1. The WMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology supports applications of meteorology in the management of agriculture, livestock, forestry, rangelands and fisheries sectors taking into account developments in both the scientific and operational fields. Most of these agricultural sectors are not viable in the polar or cryosphere regions of the world. However, there is a significant fisheries sector in the polar oceans of the world.

2. JCOMM and CAgM have recently established a Joint Task Team on Weather, Climate, and Fisheries to explore potential weather and climate products for the fisheries sector. This Task Team held it's first meeting in Noumea, New Caledonia in February 2013. The following TORs of this Task Team that maybe of interest to PORS:

I) to review the current data collection by JCOMM and others, to assess how these data meet the current needs of the ecosystem-approach to management in fisheries;

II) To encourage oceanic and coastal fisheries management organizations to inform their members about the advantages of making and reporting relevant marine meteorological and ocean observations to the various WMO/IOC observation and information systems;

III) To identify risk assessment or management evaluation tools that incorporate climate variability in order to improve the ecosystem-approach to management of fisheries.

3. The fishing industry deploys a significant amount of platforms in the open ocean to attract fish. These platforms have or could have instrumentation that record ocean temperature, salinity, and other parameters that could be useful to the ocean and meteorological models. Also, any climate predictions of the polar regions could also be used for the polar fishing industry.

4. This Task Team has just started it's work and it will keep the PORS community of its outcomes during the next two years.