Second ILICO Integration workshop on marine heat waves

Since 2022, a succession of marine heat waves have been observed along the metropolitan french coasts. These have had devastating consequences for marine ecosystems (species distribution, mass migrations, high mortality) and major socio-economic repercussions (fishing, aquaculture, tourism). The Integration group, formed in 2023 and made up of researchers, lecturers/researchers and managers, brings together different areas of expertise (physical, biogeochemical, biological) to better characterise these marine heat waves, improve our understanding of the physical processes responsible for them, and their biogeochemical and biological impacts. One of the objectives of this working group is also to assess the capacity of current national observation networks and numerical models to document these extreme events. Finally, the aim is to encourage interaction between managers and researchers, so that the tools needed by managers to implement appropriate solutions can be put in place.

The second Integration scientific workshop of the IR ILICO, funded by the OFB, took place from 6 to 8 November 2024 in Villefranche-sur-mer.

After a first half-day of presentations, it was organised around 2 working groups and 4 themes:
– Definition of the impacts to be observed and modelled
– Design of a network of observations/campaigns at sea to better capture marine heat waves and their impacts in different compartments (short and long term)
– Study of O2/pH/pCO2 processes linked to heat waves in 2022, 2023 and 2024 (observations vs. models)
– Study of fine-scale processes (spatial, sub-surface down to the seabed) to examine the mecanisms of these events. How can we imagine sensitivity scenarios around heat waves?

A presentation was made at the ILICO general assembly in Brest on 18-20 November 2024.

Contact: Caroline Ulses (LEGOS, caroline.ulses at univ-tlse3.fr), Laurent Coppola (LOV, laurent.coppola at imev-mer.fr), Nicolas Savoye (EPOC, nicolas.savoye at u-bordeux.fr), Guillaume Charria (LOPS/Ifremer guillaume.charria at ifremer.fr)