ICES/PICES/PAME Working Group on Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) for the Central Arctic Ocean (WGICA; outputs from the 2019 meeting)

The joint ICES-PICES-PAME Working Group on Integrated Ecosystem Assessment for the Cen-tral Arctic Ocean (WGICA) provides integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs), including ecosys-tem overviews, for the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO). Over the last few decades, about half the area and ¾ of the volume of the minimum sea ice in summer have been lost with a pronounced change from thick and old multiyear ice to now mostly thin and young ice (the ‘Great melt’). The working group aims to improve the understanding of how much Great melt affects to climate and ecosystem variability of the core ICES area in the North Atlantic as well as in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska in the North Pacific.In late 2020, the group will publish the “Integrated Ecosystem Assessment of the Central Arctic Ocean: Ecosystem description and vulnerability characterization” The availability of biological and oceanographic time-series in the CAO to describe status and changes of the ecosystem is limited. WGICA will therefore seek to increase the use of satellite remote sensing data and nu-merical model output data for deriving information on changing of environment and lower trophic level ecosystem. WGICA will compile data from ongoing and recent changes and events in the CAO ecosystem and new studies on fish, such as the MOSAiC expedition (2019-2020) and the international Synoptic Arctic Survey (SAS).WGICA is also compiling a second IEA report for the CAO ecosystem focusing on an overview of the ecosystem and vulnerability. A vulnerability characterization will include an assessment of human activities (climate and climate change, contaminants and pollution, shipping (includ-ing tourism), and potential future fisheries) and their pressures and impacts on the ecosystem.