Here, we demonstrate the ability to use short-term (up to nine month) predictions of ocean conditions from J-SCOPE to create a novel forecast of the spatial distribution of Pacific sardine, Sardinops sagax.

Details of the model can be found in:

Kaplan IC, Williams G, Bond N, Hermann A, and Siedlecki S. In press. "Cloudy with a chance of sardines: forecasting sardine distributions using regional climate models". Fisheries Oceanography.

The model had moderate skill (AUC = 0.67) in predicting 2009 sardine distributions, five to eight months in advance. Preliminary tests indicate that the model also had skill to predict sardine presence in August 2013 (AUC = 0.85) and August 2014 (AUC = 0.96), four to five months in advance. An AUC of 1.0 is ideal, and an AUC of 0.5 is model that performs no better than a coin toss.

The model forecast that in August of 2013 the areas with highest probability of sardine presence (or suitable habitat) would be off the Columbia River and the Washington Coast, extending no farther north than the southern coast of Vancouver Island. The J-SCOPE CFS-ROMS projections underlying this were based on forecasts initialized to represent April 1, 2013, and hence were forecast five months in advance. Field observations support the presence of sardine off the Columbia River and Washington State, but the August WCVI survey did not detect any sardine off southern Vancouver Island. Thus the model captures the observations off Washington and Oregon but over-predicts sardine presence off a portion of Vancouver Island. The AUC for August 2013 is 0.85, beating the null expectation of 0.5.