Climate Attribution in Fishery Stock Assessment: Case Studies From the Northeast U.S. Groundfish Stocks

ABSTRACT Climate change poses an unprecedented risk to fisheries ecosystems and economies globally. Ocean warming has led to observed geographic shifts and changes in the productivity of fish stocks. Due to the rapid pace of change in many of the world's oceans, there is a critical need to develop and apply scientific knowledge and tools that can help account for non‐stationarity and integrate climate and ecosystem drivers into fishery stock assessment to improve management outcomes. We developed a structured approach to identify and integrate the impact of climate and ecosystem change on fish stock dynamics in the context of stock assessment processes. We describe lessons learned in the application of this approach to groundfish stock assessment processes in the Northeast U.S. (American plaice, Atlantic cod and yellowtail flounder). The approach involves three general steps: (1) synthesizing the state of knowledge on stock‐climate relationships, (2) accounting for climate impacts on key data inputs and biological parameters that inform assessments, and (3) developing and evaluating the performance of climate informed stock assessment models. This approach represents an advance in climate attribution within stock assessment and is expected to enhance assessment performance and projection realism, supporting fisheries decision‐making for future resource sustainability.