More from my conversation with Thermal Science expert Dr. John Abraham.
Juxtaposing with some amplifying text from this week’s newly released US National Climate Assessment.
US National Climate Assessment:
Critical habitats such as coral reefs, seagrass beds, and kelp forests have experienced large-scale degradation due to climate-related stressors, threatening their ability to support commercially and ecologically important fish, shellfish, turtles, and marine mammals. Degradation of nursery habitats, spawning areas, and other essential habitats has the potential to affect the productivity and distribution of species.
Marine species are shifting their geographic distributions even faster than terrestrial species and are changing the timing of seasonal activities. As changes cascade from microbes to top predators across food webs, these shifts are decoupling some predator–prey relationships and amplifying others. For example, shifts in species have reduced prey availability for seabirds, driving large-scale starvation events and breeding-colony failures.
While warming has benefitted some marine resources in poleward portions of their range (such as an increased abundance of American lobster in the Gulf of Maine), many species—especially those that are cold-adapted, fixed in place, or have complex life histories—have been negatively affected. Protected and endangered species with limited population resilience, including multiple species of coral, salmon, and whales, are particularly vulnerable to impacts of unfavorable physical and ecosystem conditions