The Pacific Fishery Management Council manages fisheries off the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington, for about 119 species of ground fish, salmon, coastal pelagic species, and highly migratory species. The Pacific Fishery Management Council has requested that its Ecosystem Plan Development Team provide annual State of the California Current Ecosystem Reports. The reports include observed indicators of environmental conditions in the California Current that affect the productivity and distribution of harvested fish populations.

Using our JSCOPE ocean condition predictions, we can forecast many of these California Current environmental conditions and indicators, including:

• Regional Upwelling Indices which drive local primary production: The wind product reported here is the 8-day Upwelling Index. The average of all three model runs making up the ensemble is plotted as a solid line with the range of ensemble runs shown as a gray cloud around the line. The upwelling season is forecasted to begin on the 21st day of March (black line), which is earlier than the climatological average of April 13th (pink line).

• The second is the Cumulative Upwelling Index, CUI. The ensemble mean is plotted in the solid line and range of the ensemble runs plotted as thin blue lines around that line. The spring transition or day when upwelling begins predicted by the CUI is Late February, with a lot of uncertainty into early March. Two ensemble members agree that the transition is predicted to occur earlier than the climatological average of April 13th. In addition, the CUI is predicted to be lower than the average of 6,163 m3/sec per 100 meter of coastline. We know from prior forecast years that the CFS model is biased toward longer upwelling seasons, due to late onset of the fall transition.

• Dissolved oxygen levels and hypoxic events
• Ocean conditions relevant to coastal pelagic species and salmon distribution or abundance

Complementary forecasting tools provide forecasts of basin-scale climate indicators:

• Multivariate ENSO Index: The Dec 2017 CFS forecasts ENSO-neutral conditions are likely in 2018.

• Pacific Decadal Oscillation: The Dec 2017 CFS forecast suggests a transition to more negative PDO conditions in the spring and summer of 2018.