FOCUS: Future states Of the global Coastal ocean: Understanding for Solutions

2021-2030 is the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development aiming at "The science we need for the ocean we want" through "Transformative ocean science solutions for sustainable development, connecting people and our ocean". In FOCUS we aim to make a significant UK contribution to the Decade through a broad body of scientific endeavour.

This crosses multiple disciplines, focusing on the coastal zone and shelf seas at a global scale (the "Global Coastal Ocean") and addresses each of the seven expected Decade Outcomes: i A clean ocean ; ii A healthy and resilient ocean; iii A productive ocean; iv A predicted ocean; v A safe ocean; vi An accessible ocean; vii An inspiring and engaging ocean. The Decade works through endorsed international programmes, and NOC and PML have been involved in the co-design of several of these, notably: CoastPredict: Observing and Predicting the Global Coastal Ocean and Ocean Acidification Research for Sustainability.

Alongside the UN Decade, the World Climate Research Programme is currently designing "Light House Activities" and FOCUS scientists will contribute to this, particularly on Sea Level Rise in Safe Climate Landing. Alongside these global partnerships we will work with regional partnerships, such as the SE Asia Land to Ocean Network and the Network-to-Network for the Gulf of Mexico, and many research institutions and universities around the world.

Working in these partnerships, we address the fact that the global coastal ocean is under immense pressure from human instigated climate change and population growth. Climatic changes in marine temperature, circulation and acidity impact on marine ecosystems and their ability to provide 'ecosystem services' such food from fisheries and drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere.

Sea level rise and increases in storminess hugely increase the risk of coastal flooding. How these climate impacts act together and relate to changes to episodic events (such as storms) is a major knowledge gap. Similarly, substantially rising human activity in the coastal zone (e.g. in growing megacities) leads to increased risk of pollution and degradation to marine environments without careful management.

Many aspects, such as nutrient pollution from agriculture and sewage, have been investigated for years, but others are newly emerging, e.g. the impacts of mining waste, pollution from shipping and artificial light at night. Again, how these multiple direct human impacts act together is largely unknown. Coastal habitats, such as seagrasses, mangroves and seaweeds have the potential to draw down substantial amounts of CO2 and help stall climate change, but only if they are healthy ecosystems.

Hence, understanding how the protection and restoration of these environments can improve CO2 drawdown is an important aspect in fighting climate change. Finally, to address the issues described above on a global scale requires new approaches to translating understanding from one region to another - particularly from data rich to data sparse areas. This involves developing approaches to classify the global coastal ocean, based on our understanding of oceanographic processes, and to develop ways to capture and compare the exposure of climate change risk of different sea areas.

Social information can be added to this to create a whole-system view, for example, from climate to ecosystems to fisheries and to people.

In FOCUS we will bring to bear the full range of oceanographic tools to address these pressing issues, including numerical models, satellite remote sensing, field surveys and laboratory work. Extensively we will reanalyse existing data from around the world in novel and innovative ways and we will engage with scientists from many regions (such as South and South East Asia and the Caribbean), to build on existing knowledge, in a spirit of mutual respect and transparency, freely sharing methods and data.