Director of Science honoured for contributions to Ocean
Science
14 June 2010
Dr Manuel Barange, Director of Science at PML, was honoured
this week with the Roger Revelle Medal for his outstanding
accomplishments and contributions to ocean sciences.
The medal was awarded at the Intergovernmental Oceanographic
Commission’s annual Executive Council meeting, held in Paris, where
Dr Barange also gave the hallmark Roger Revelle Memorial Lecture,
entitled “Learning to Swim: exploring the challenges to marine
resource sustainability”.
Dr Barange presented work, largely conducted over the last 10 years
by the international GLOBEC programme, on the impacts of climate
variability and change on marine ecosystems. While both climate and
humans are known to be capable of causing major change in marine
ecosystems, one of the most significant lessons learned is that
both interact to such an extent that their individual impacts
cannot be disentangled.
Manuel commented: “Surprisingly, marine ecosystems under intense
human influence tend to have greater sensitivity to climate forcing
and strong feedbacks (consequences) develop between ecosystems and
human communities at many scales”.We know that climate change will
affect the distribution and abundance of fish populations, and we
can estimate the direction and project the extent of such changes.
But if the impacts of climate on marine resources interact with
human responses to influence the outcome, what is the role that
humans will play in accelerating or slowing down the impacts of
climate change, through our capacity to adapt? Do we even have the
tools to answer this question?”
Manuel continued: “These realisations limit our capacity to
predict the impacts of climate change with certainty and thus, our
ability to protect the sustainability of marine resources. In
recent years we have made some excellent progress in developing
predictive models that investigate the processes linking
atmospheric climate, ocean climate and marine ecosystem dynamics,
include fish resources. The emergence of models that link
climate-driven changes with economic-driven changes allow us to
explore the ‘ocean of tomorrow’, despite the large uncertainties
associated with climate change”.
As well as Manuel’s role as Director of Science at PML, he is also
Chair of the Scientific Committee of the International Council for
the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and, until recently, was Director
of the International Project Office of the GLOBEC (Global Ocean
Ecosystem Dynamics) programme, which finished earlier this
year.