Abstract
Climate change is expected to modify ecological responses in the ocean, with the potential for important effects on the ecosystem services provided to humankind. Here we address the question of how rapidly multiple drivers of marine ecosystem change develop in the future ocean. By analysing an ensemble of models we find that, within the next 15 years, the climate change-driven trends in multiple ecosystem drivers emerge from the background of natural variability in 55% of the ocean and propagate rapidly to encompass 86% of the ocean by 2050 under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. However, we also demonstrate that the exposure of marine ecosystems to climate change-induced stress can be drastically reduced via climate mitigation measures; with mitigation, the proportion of ocean susceptible to multiple drivers within the next 15 years is reduced to 34%. Mitigation slows the pace at which multiple drivers emerge, allowing an additional 20 years for adaptation in marine ecological and socio-economic systems alike.
Highlights
Climate change is expected to modify ecological responses in the ocean, with the potential for important effects on the ecosystem services provided to humankind
Using a multi-model ensemble from the CMIP5 archive (Supplementary Table 1), we construct time series for each variable of annual maxima or minima for the period 1860–2100 using a combination of the historical runs (1860–2005) and future scenarios (2006–2100)[41]
The start of the climate change signal is defined as the year when conditions become persistently uni-directional, and the time of emergence (ToE) is defined as the year when annual extrema exceed the long-term trend persistently for the remainder of the time series
Summary
Climate change is expected to modify ecological responses in the ocean, with the potential for important effects on the ecosystem services provided to humankind. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies four principal climate drivers that affect marine ecosystem structure, functioning and adaptive capacity[8]: pH, temperature, oxygen concentration and food availability. Ocean pH is reduced by increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, which may result in reduced viability of calcareous organisms, among other effects[5]. The solubility of oxygen and exchange of subsurface waters with the atmosphere will be reduced with warmer temperatures, driving lower oceanic oxygen concentrations with potentially negative effects on marine organisms[10]. The projected climate change response over the coming century in these environmental drivers is large, so is the natural variability encountered by marine organisms, suggesting that some species have the capacity to adapt or acclimate to change[5,14,15]. Warming and ocean acidification have antagonistic effects on sea urchin larval growth, resulting in minimal overall impact ( both have a negative effect on larval abnormality[29])
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