More losers than winners in a century of future Southern Ocean seafloor warming

Huw J. Griffiths (), Andrew J. S. Meijers and Thomas J. Bracegirdle
Additional contact information
Huw J. Griffiths: British Antarctic Survey
Andrew J. S. Meijers: British Antarctic Survey
Thomas J. Bracegirdle: British Antarctic Survey

Nature Climate Change, 2017, vol. 7, issue 10, 749-754

Abstract: Abstract The waters of the Southern Ocean are projected to warm over the coming century, with potential adverse consequences for native cold-adapted organisms. Warming waters have caused temperate marine species to shift their ranges poleward. The seafloor animals of the Southern Ocean shelf have long been isolated by the deep ocean surrounding Antarctica and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, with little scope for southward migration. How these largely endemic species will react to future projected warming is unknown. By considering 963 invertebrate species, we show that within the current century, warming temperatures alone are unlikely to result in wholesale extinction or invasion affecting Antarctic seafloor life. However, 79% of Antarctica’s endemic species do face a significant reduction in suitable temperature habitat (an average 12% reduction). Our findings highlight the species and regions most likely to respond significantly (negatively and positively) to warming and have important implications for future management of the region.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3377 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:7:y:2017:i:10:d:10.1038_nclimate3377

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3377

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().