In order to advance our understanding and the predictive capacities necessary to resolve how marine ecosystems will respond to global change MEECE employs a combination of data synthesis, numerical simulation and targeted experimentation to further our knowledge of how marine ecosystems will respond to combinations of these climate change and anthropogenic drivers.

A key objective of MEECE is to advance model coupling across trophic levels and create concepts and infrastructure to enable end-to-end modeling, from physics to fish, which has empirically been difficult due to different space and time scales involved, as well as relative emphasis of statistical and mechanistic aspects. Finally MEECE integrate modeling advancements with fishery management perspectives.

The project is coordinated by Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK, and has 21 partners from the EU.