Marine high temperature extremes amplify the impacts of climate change on fish and fisheries

Abstract

The SSP storylines served as the starting point for the development of the quantitative SSP elements. Each storyline provides a brief narrative of the main characteristics of the future development path of an SSP. The storylines were identified at the joint IAV and IAM workshop in Boulder, November 2011. A brief summary of the storylines are provided here for comprehensiveness. For further details and extended descriptions of the storylines, see O'Neill et al. (2012). SSP1 -Sustainability:This is a world making relatively good progress towards sustainability, with sustained efforts to achieve development goals, while reducing resource intensity and fossil fuel dependency. Elements that contribute to this are a rapid development of low-income countries, a reduction of inequality (globally and within economies), rapid technology development, and a high level of awareness regarding environmental degradation. Rapid economic growth in low-income countries reduces the number of people below the poverty line. The world is characterized by an open, globalized economy, with relatively rapid technological change directed toward environmentally friendly processes, including clean energy technologies and yield-enhancing technologies for land. Consumption is oriented towards low material growth and energy intensity, with a relatively low level of consumption of animal products. Investments in high levels of education coincide with low population growth. Concurrently, governance and institutions facilitate achieving development goals and problem solving. The Millennium Development Goals are achieved within the next decade or two, resulting in educated populations with access to safe water, improved sanitation and medical care. Other factors that reduce vulnerability to climate and other global changes include, for example, the successful implementation of stringent policies to control air pollutants and rapid shifts toward universal access to clean and modern energy in the developing world. SSP 2 -Middle of the Road (or Dynamics as Usual, or Current Trends Continue, or Continuation, or Muddling Through):In this world, trends typical of recent decades continue, with some progress towards achieving development goals, reductions in resource and energy intensity at historic rates, and slowly decreasing fossil fuel dependency. Development of low-income countries proceeds unevenly, with some countries making relatively good progress while others are left behind. Most economies are politically stable with partially functioning and globally connected markets. A limited number of comparatively weak global institutions exist. Per-capita income levels grow at a medium pace on the global average, with slowly converging income levels between developing and industrialized countries. Intra-regional income distributions improve slightly with increasing national income, but disparities remain high in some regions. Educational investments are not high enough to rapidly slow population growth, particularly in low-income countries. Achievement of...

Thermal regime during parental sexual maturation, but not during offspring rearing, modulates DNA methylation in brook charr (Salvelinus fontinalis)

“…As sea surface temperatures increase, it is expected that biomass of aquatic organisms such as fish will decrease, resulting in considerable economic losses [3]. With most of eastern Canada experiencing moderate increases in mean annual temperatures and temperature extremes, fish catch is predicted to decrease and considerable declines in fish stocks are forecast due to long-term increases in temperature [3]. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms through which fishes can respond to climate change is a priority for the conservation of fish stocks [4][5][6].…”

Successive extreme climatic events lead to immediate, large‐scale, and diverse responses from fish in the Arctic

“…Recent reviews on the subject call for an effort toward better understanding of ECEs and their ecosystem consequences to improve their predictability, and support ecosystem‐based management to maintain marine systems resilience (Holbrook et al, 2020; Trebilco et al, 2022; van de Pol et al, 2017). These environmental “pulse” perturbations have often severe ecological impacts (Maxwell et al, 2019; Ummenhofer & Meehl, 2017), altering ecosystem structure and function (Huntington et al, 2020), and threatening the provision of ecosystem services (Cheung et al, 2021; Mills et al, 2013; Smale et al, 2019). The ecological effects of ECEs may accelerate climate‐driven trends or involve additional impacts, such as population collapses, decline of habitat‐forming species (Babcock et al, 2019; Wernberg et al, 2013), or increased sensitivity to multiple pressures (Collins et al, 2017).…”

Risk Management and Adaptation for Extremes and Abrupt Changes in Climate and Oceans: Current Knowledge Gaps

“…Many other marine organisms and ecosystems, both in coastal and open-ocean areas, including seabird populations (Piatt et al, 2020), can be strongly affected by MHWs. Generally, MHWs result in loss in biodiversity and genetic diversity, change in species distribution (Cheung and Frölicher, 2020), behaviour or performance leading to economic loss from changes in fishery catch (Cheung et al, 2021), decrease in adaptive capacity of fish and mortality or reduced production in aquaculture (see Smale et al, 2019;Holbrook et al, 2020). These impacts may either come from a change in species population as highlighted in the examples above, or may also result from blooms of harmful microorganisms.…”

“…Since the publication of the SROCC, additional research suggests that globally the potential catch of fisheries will drop by 6 percent per year and 77 percent of exploited fishes and invertebrates will decrease in biomass during extremely hot years. This will occur on top of the projected decrease in fish stocks from long-term climate change (Cheung et al, 2021). However, at the regional scale, the impacts of MHWs on fisheries can be diverse.…”