The J-SCOPE forecast system for Washington and Oregon coastal waters presents preliminary results for the 2020 upwelling season. The CFS forecast indicates the current ENSO-neutral conditions are most likely through the Northern Hemisphere spring 2020 (~60 percent chance) and summer 2020 (~50 percent chance). In comparison to the climatological data, coastal waters in the J-SCOPE domain during the summer upwelling season (May - August) are forecast to have near climatological sea surface temperatures (SST) until summer (July-August) when they become warmer, but these warm anomalies do not extend to subsurface habitats. Bottom oxygen is forecast to be lower over the Washington and Oregon continental shelves early in the upwelling season with the Oregon shelf trending toward near climatological values later in the upwelling season with high disagreement between ensemble members. Chlorophyll concentrations vary spatially and temporally but are forecast to be near climatological values early in the upwelling season but lower over the Washington and Oregon shelves later in the upwelling season. Bottom Ω is forecast to be undersaturated throughout the upwelling season, with the exception of supersaturated conditions on the Washington shelf. Surface Ω is forecast to be supersaturated throughout the upwelling season for all coastal areas.

The forecast system predicts the timing of the spring transition from downwelling to upwelling, the cumulative upwelling index, sea-surface temperature (SST), primary production, chlorophyll stock, dissolved oxygen, and sardine habitat. The forecast for 2020 is composed of three model runs that make up an ensemble. Each model run is initialized at a different time (January 5, January 15, January 25), and has complementary forcing files from the large scale model, CFS. The details of the wind forcing for each model run can be found on the California Current Indicators tab. For each of the predicted quantities listed above, we report the ensemble average anomaly as well as the relative uncertainty within the ensemble, which is defined as the standard deviation of the ensemble divided by the mean of the ensemble and is reported as a percentage of the mean. All of these quantities are reported as monthly averaged anomalies from our new January-initialized reforecast climatology, which spans 2009 - 2017. An anomaly is an indication of how different conditions are to what they have been in the past. For more information about anomalies, please see the NANOOS Climatology App. These predicted quantities are key indicators for the California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment report.