A new study published in Scientific Reports provides novel insight into how species’ distributions change from the interaction between climate change and ocean currents.
A new study published in Scientific Reports provides novel insight into how species’ distributions change from the interaction between climate change and ocean currents.
As the climate gets warmer, species migrate to new regions where conditions are more tolerable, such as higher latitudes, deeper waters, or higher terrain. This leads to a shift in their geographical range that can produce significant changes to ecosystems and serious socioeconomic and human health implications. But their prediction is difficult because of the complex interactions between changes in climate and other existing human, environmental and biological factors.
“External directional forces, such as water and air currents, are one of those important but overlooked processes that act as conveyor belts facilitating or hindering the dispersion of species” says Dr. Jorge García Molinos, the lead author at the Arctic Research Center of Hokkaido University. “How the movement of climate relates to the movement of water can offer valuable insight to better understand how species track a shifting climate.”
García Molinos and his collaborators in the UK and Germany have developed a simple metric to capture the directional agreement between surface ocean currents and warming. They used it in combination with other parameters to build an explanatory model for 270 range shifts in marine biota reported around the globe.
Read more at Hokkaido University
Image: Red colors represent good directional agreement whereas green colors represent directional mismatch (1979-2012). (Credit: García Molinos et al., Scientific Reports, May 2, 2017)
