Rynne N. auteur aut IRD Novaglio C. auteur aut IRD Blanchard J. auteur aut IRD Bianchi D. auteur aut IRD Christensen V. auteur aut IRD Coll Marta auteur aut IRD Guiet J. auteur aut IRD Steenbeek J. auteur aut IRD Bryndum-Buchholz A. auteur aut IRD Eddy T. D. auteur aut IRD Harrison C. auteur aut IRD Maury Olivier auteur aut IRD Ortega-Cisneros K. auteur aut IRD Petrik C. M. auteur aut IRD Tittensor D. P. auteur aut IRD Heneghan R. F. auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf reformatted digital access Understanding climate change impacts on global marine ecosystems and fisheries requires complex marine ecosystem models, forced by global climate projections, that can robustly detect and project changes. The Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems Model Intercomparison Project (FishMIP) uses an ensemble modeling approach to fill this crucial gap. Yet FishMIP does not have a standardised skill assessment framework to quantify the ability of member models to reproduce past observations and to guide model improvement. In this study, we apply a comprehensive model skill assessment framework to a subset of global FishMIP models that produce historical fisheries catches. We consider a suite of metrics and assess their utility in illustrating the models' ability to reproduce observed fisheries catches. Our findings reveal improvement in model performance at both global and regional (Large Marine Ecosystem) scales from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 and 6 simulation rounds. Our analysis underscores the importance of employing easily interpretable, relative skill metrics to estimate the capability of models to capture temporal variations, alongside absolute error measures to characterize shifts in the magnitude of these variations between models and across simulation rounds. The skill assessment framework developed and tested here provides a first objective assessment and a baseline of the FishMIP ensemble's skill in reproducing historical catch at the global and regional scale. This assessment can be further improved and systematically applied to test the reliability of FishMIP models across the whole model ensemble from future simulation rounds and include more variables like fish biomass or production. specialized model skill assessment FishMIP CSPS ecosystem modeling global fisheries impact climactic change 040 036 020 021 13 4 e2024EF004868 [18 ] 2025 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010093350 10.1029/2024ef004868 [F B010093350] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010093350 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/2025-05/010093350.pdf IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2025-05-14 2026-01-28 fdi:010093350 fre