Sustained climate warming drives declining marine biological productivity
Starving ocean productivity
Projected increases in greenhouse gas emissions could suppress marine biological productivity for a thousand years or more. As the climate warms, westerly winds in the Southern Hemisphere will strengthen and shift poleward, surface waters will warm, and sea ice will disappear. Moore et al. suggest that one effect of these changes will be a dramatic decrease in marine biological productivity (see the Perspective by Laufkötter and Gruber). This decrease will result from a global-scale redistribution of nutrients, with a net transfer to the deep ocean. By 2300, this could drive declines in fisheries yields by more than 20% globally and by nearly 60% in the North Atlantic.
Abstract
Climate change projections to the year 2100 may miss physical-biogeochemical feedbacks that emerge later from the cumulative effects of climate warming. In a coupled climate simulation to the year 2300, the westerly winds strengthen and shift poleward, surface waters warm, and sea ice disappears, leading to intense nutrient trapping in the Southern Ocean. The trapping drives a global-scale nutrient redistribution, with net transfer to the deep ocean. Ensuing surface nutrient reductions north of 30°S drive steady declines in primary production and carbon export (decreases of 24 and 41%, respectively, by 2300). Potential fishery yields, constrained by lower–trophic-level productivity, decrease by more than 20% globally and by nearly 60% in the North Atlantic. Continued high levels of greenhouse gas emissions could suppress marine biological productivity for a millennium.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Supplementary Text
Figs. S1 to S18
Tables S1 to S5
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Volume 359 | Issue 6380
9 March 2018
9 March 2018
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Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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Received: 10 August 2017
Accepted: 5 February 2018
Published in print: 9 March 2018
Acknowledgments
We received support from the Reducing Uncertainty in Biogeochemical Interactions through Synthesis and Computation (RUBISCO) Scientific Focus Area (SFA) in the Regional and Global Climate Modeling Program in the Climate and Environmental Sciences Division of the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) Division of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (as well as DOE BER Earth System Modeling Program grants ER65358 and DE-SC0016539 to J.K.M. and F.P.). Some authors received additional support from the NSF. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project received support from the World Climate Research Programme and the DOE Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) provided computational and other support. NCAR is sponsored by the NSF.
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U.S. Department of Energy: ER65358
U.S. Department of Energy: DE-SC0016539
U.S. Department of Energy: RUBISCO Science Focus Area
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