The J-SCOPE forecast system for Washington and Oregon coastal waters presents preliminary results for the 2023 upwelling season. Although a weak La Niña was still apparent during January, the CFS forecast indicates El Niño conditions are expected to begin, and persist through the Northern Hemisphere summer and into fall. In comparison to the climatological data, during the summer upwelling season (May-August), coastal regions are forecasted to have near climatological sea surface temperatures (SST) with the cool anomalies extending subsurface along 47 N and 44 N. Bottom oxygen is forecasted to be lower over both the Washington Oregon shelves. Hypoxia is forecasted earlier than climatological at both CEO42 and NH10 and even develops late summer/early fall at Ćháʔba· although this time period experiences low confidence in our forecast experience. Chlorophyll concentrations vary spatially but are forecasted to be higher on the northern Washington shelf and the Oregon shelf in July/August. Bottom Ω is forecasted to be undersaturated throughout the upwelling season, with the exception of supersaturated conditions on shallow nearshore Washington shelves. Surface Ω is forecasted to be supersaturated throughout the upwelling season for all coastal areas.

The forecast system predicts the timing of the spring transition from downwelling to upwelling, the cumulative upwelling index, sea-surface temperature (SST), primary production, chlorophyll stock, dissolved oxygen, and sardine habitat. The forecast for 2023 is composed of three model runs that make up an ensemble. Each model run is initialized at a different time (April 5, April 15, April 25), and has complementary forcing files from the large scale model, CFS. The details of the wind forcing for each model run can be found on the California Current Indicators tab. For each of the predicted quantities listed above, we report the ensemble average anomaly as well as the relative uncertainty within the ensemble, which is defined as the standard deviation of the ensemble divided by the mean of the ensemble and is reported as a percentage of the mean. All of these quantities are reported as monthly averaged anomalies from our April-initialized reforecast climatology, which spans 2009-2017. An anomaly is an indication of how different conditions are to what they have been in the past. For more information about anomalies, please see the NANOOS Climatology App. These predicted quantities are key indicators for the California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment report.