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Persistent Threat to Coastal Ecosystems from Marine Heatwaves

Presentation Date
Tuesday, December 13, 2022 at 11:24am - Tuesday, December 13, 2022 at 11:35am
Location
McCormick Place - S406b
Authors

Author

Abstract

Marine heatwaves (MHWs), periods of abnormally high sea surface temperature (SST), have substantial impacts on marine ecosystems. Large marine ecosystems (LMEs) cover ~22% of the global ocean but account for 95% of global fisheries catches. Yet how climate change affects MHWs over LMEs remains unknown because such LMEs are confined to the coast where low-resolution climate models are known to have biases. Here, using a high-resolution Earth system model that resolves ocean mesoscale eddies and improves the capability to reproduce MHWs compared with the coarse-resolution models, we apply a “future threshold” that considers MHWs as anomalous warming above the evolving long-term warming and find that the future intensity and annual days of MHWs over the majority of the LMEs remain higher than in the present-day climate. These increases in MHWs suggest that even if species could adapt fully to the future mean warming, risks from marine heatwaves to coastal ecosystems are substantial.

Category
Global Environmental Change
Funding Program Area(s)