Predicting ecological responses in a changing ocean: the effects of future climate uncertainty

Abstract

Predicting how species will respond to climate change is a growing field in marine ecology, yet knowledge of how to incorporate the uncertainty from future climate data into these predictions remains a significant challenge. To help overcome it, this review separates climate uncertainty into its three components (scenario uncertainty, model uncertainty, and internal model variability) and identifies four criteria that constitute a thorough interpretation of an ecological response to climate change in relation to these parts (awareness, access, incorporation, communication). Through a literature review, the extent to which the marine ecology community has addressed these criteria in their predictions was assessed. Despite a high awareness of climate uncertainty, articles favoured the most severe emission scenario, and only a subset of climate models were used as input into ecological analyses. In the case of sea surface temperature, these models can have projections unrepresentative against a larger ensemble mean. Moreover, 91% of studies failed to incorporate the internal variability of a climate model into results. We explored the influence that the choice of emission scenario, climate model, and model realisation can have when predicting the future distribution of the pelagic fish, Electrona antarctica. Future distributions were highly influenced by the choice of climate model, and in some cases, internal variability was important in determining the direction and severity of the distribution change. Increased clarity and availability of processed climate data would facilitate more comprehensive explorations of climate uncertainty, and increase in the quality and standard of marine prediction studies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00227-017-3239-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Diversity of Mesopelagic Fishes in the Southern Ocean - A Phylogeographic Perspective Using DNA Barcoding

“…So far, only one study has investigated genetic structure of an Antarctic myctophid with multiple, variable markers (Van de Putte et al, 2012). Insights into the genetics of myctophid populations would be useful in order to optimize current modeling efforts (Koubbi et al, 2011;Freer et al, 2018), which in turn are important for conservation planning in the Southern Ocean (Hill et al, 2017). Attempts to explain and forecast mesopelagic fish distribution ranges typically use oceanographic parameters, particularly temperature and salinity (Koubbi et al, 2011;Duhamel et al, 2014;Olivar et al, 2017).…”

Predicting future distributions of lanternfish, a significant ecological resource within the Southern Ocean

“…For some of the species investigated, the direction of change was highly dependent on the climate model employed, rather than the emission scenario. Between‐model uncertainty has been found to be the dominant source of climate variability in polar regions (Frölicher, Rodgers, Stock, & Cheung, ) and was previously found to affect predictions of myctophid species distributions more than other levels of climate uncertainty (Freer, Tarling, Collins, Partridge, & Genner, ). Much of the variability in the outcomes of E. antarctica, G. braueri and G. nicholsi can be contributed to the two ESMs from the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), namely models GFDL‐ESM2M and GFDL‐ESM2G (Figure in Appendix ) as these are the only ESMs to predict large areas of SST cooling south of 50° latitude.…”

Myctophid Fish (Family Myctophidae) Are Central Consumers in the Food Web of the Scotia Sea (Southern Ocean)

“…Given the uncertainties of the impacts of broad-scale environmental change on the Scotia Sea myctophid community (Freer et al, 2017), it remains questionable how long, and to what extent, the myctophid-based trophic pathway can compensate for a reduction in krill and how ecosystem structure will alter as a consequence. However, there are several regions of the Southern Ocean with comparatively low Antarctic krill abundance that could potentially offer some insight into the structure of the Scotia Sea food web with less krill.…”