Southern hemisphere eastern boundary upwelling systems emerging as future marine heatwave hotspots under greenhouse warming

Shengpeng Wang, Zhao Jing (), Lixin Wu, Shantong Sun, Qihua Peng, Hong Wang, Yu Zhang and Jian Shi
Additional contact information
Shengpeng Wang: Ocean University of China
Zhao Jing: Ocean University of China
Lixin Wu: Ocean University of China
Shantong Sun: Florida State University
Qihua Peng: University of California San Diego
Hong Wang: Ocean University of China
Yu Zhang: Ocean University of China
Jian Shi: Ocean University of China

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Marine heatwaves (MHWs) exert devastating impacts on ecosystems and have been revealed to increase in their incidence, duration, and intensity in response to greenhouse warming. The biologically productive eastern boundary upwelling systems (EBUSs) are generally regarded as thermal refugia for marine species due to buffering effects of upwelling on ocean warming. However, using an ensemble of state-of-the-art high-resolution global climate simulations under a high carbon emission scenario, here we show that the MHW stress, measured as the annual cumulative intensity of MHWs, is projected to increase faster in the Southern Hemisphere EBUSs (Humboldt and Benguela current systems) than in their adjacent oceans. This is mainly because the additional warming caused by the weakened eastern boundary currents overwhelms the buffering effect of upwelling. Our findings suggest that the Southern Hemisphere EBUSs will emerge as local hotspots of MHWs in the future, potentially causing severe threats to the ecosystems.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35666-8 Abstract (text/html)

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:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-35666-8

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35666-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

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