Our chesapeake BAY environmental forecast system (CBEFS) has been supplying the BAY community with real-time nowcasts and short-term forecasts of BAY environmental conditions since 2017

These forecasts are provided 24/7 with limited downtime, and include coastal and ocean acidification (COA) metrics such as PH, alkalinity, and aragonite saturation-state, as well as the percent chance of encountering harmful algal blooms and vibrio vulnificus. This information, together with other water quality parameters such as temperature, salinity, and water clarity, are now not only regularly used by the general public, but also by aquaculture industry specialists and shellfish restoration managers. The structure and format of the information provided, as well as the specific visualizations on our user-friendly public-facing website, have been developed based on the outcomes of multiple workshops and focus group meetings with our user community. Historically CBEFS has been funded sporadically through research grants; however, we are now seeking more sustained funding so we can continue to provide our well-established user community with the products and tools on which they have become accustomed to depending. The overall goal of this work is to provide improved chesapeake BAY forecasts of COA and related CO-stressors to the user community. This will be achieved via five objectives: (1) sustain CBEFS? Operations, (2) implement additional CBEFS improvements, (3) publish a historical climatology of BAY conditions, (4) deliver an annual acidification report card, and (5) integrate CBEFS into the official roms? Code. These objectives will directly advance several priority research objectives from the NOAA OA research plan for the mid-atlantic bight: objective 9.1: improve OA forecasts on daily to decadal timescales in context with other environmental change, objective 9.2: simulate full-water column carbonate chemistry dynamics of shelf and primary estuarine systems, and objective 9.7: integrate OA understanding into regional planning and management.