R for marine ecologists: wrangling Earth System Model outputs

Jessica A Bolin, Mercedes Pozo Buil, Nerea Lezama Ochoa, Mikaela Provost

This one-day, hands-on workshop introduces marine ecologists to the use and application of Earth System Model (ESM) outputs using R–a free, open-source programming language widely used in marine ecology. Designed for participants with basic or no prior experience in climate modeling, our workshop: 'R for marine ecologists: wrangling Earth System Model outputs' provides a comprehensive foundation in accessing, processing, and applying ESM outputs for marine ecology applications, by combining theoretical instruction with practical, live-coded sessions. Participants learn to download, regrid, statistically downscale, bias-correct, and visualize sea-surface temperature projections from two Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) models across two climate scenarios. All course materials—including a fully documented Quarto website, annotated R scripts, datasets, and a public GitHub repository—are openly available and reusable for both workshop and individual use. Our ultimate goal is to make ESMs more accessible to marine ecologists, and empower the community to incorporate climate projections into their own ecological analyses.