Effects of a changing windfield on cod stocks of the North Atlantic

This paper reviews the impacts of climatic change on six North Atlantic cod stocks during the present century – at Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, Faroes, the Barents Sea and the Baltic. Though the relevant changes in each region can all be set in the context of the same slow shifts in the large–scale Atlantic windfield, the mechanism and scale of the response is varied, operating through changes in the interstock exchange of larvae by ocean currents, direct effects of windiness on stratification, direct and indirect effects on environmental temperature and, in the special case of the Baltic, via the effects of westerly wind events on the inflow/ stagnation cycle of the Baltic Deeps. In certain places and times, these climatic influences have constituted the dominant control on the success of a stock.