Ryan R. Rykaczewski

I am interested in exploring the responses of ecosystem and fisheries production to past and future climate variability and climate change. This research involves consideration of theory, observations, and models. Currently, I investigate the biogeochemical implications of changes in physical climate that are particularly robust in the projections of atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (e.g., meridional shifts in zonal winds, increases in ocean stratification, and changes in phenology). In the past, changes in primary production, carbon export, the structure of food webs, and fisheries have often correlated with simple physical climate measures such as SST. However, these relationships rarely reflect an understanding of the actual mechanisms relating the environment to the physics.