ATLAS Policy Brief - Changing Ocean State and its Impact on Natural Capital

Executive Summary
• Ocean circulation is a dominant controller of the locations and abundances of important marine ecosystem
resources.
• Changing circulation has already led to political disputes among the UK, Iceland, Norway, the EU and Greenland.
• These changes are likely to continue.
• Climate models do not capture the full range of variability in the North-East Atlantic, so continued observations
and improved biological understanding are both needed to assess oceanographic change and its ecological
implications.