How will Climate Change affect Marine Life?

How will Climate Change affect Marine Life?

Climate change affects not only the sea level, but also the temperature, acidity, and oxygen levels in the oceans and the marine life that live there. Animals can adapt to some changes in their habitat, but there is a point of no return. Today, we don’t know what these critical thresholds are. At what temperature or oxygen level will there be catastrophic impacts for marine life? And how can we limit the damage?

Our Marine Ecosystem Modeling team has been invited to take part in a large EU H2020 research project, COMFORT, to help understand these affects of climate change on marine life. The project kicked off this fall and brings together 32 different research groups from around the world.

SEAPODYM: Fish Populations and Climate Change

The CLS team was selected based on our unique SEAPODYM model of marine ecosystems and fish population dynamics. Our team will determine the impacts of climate change on biological systems in the oceans and the safe thresholds for marine habitats, including for fisheries.

SEAPODYM was initially developed for investigating physical-biological interaction between fish populations and the ocean pelagic ecosystem. It originally focused on tuna population dynamics in the Pacific Ocean.

More specifically, the COMFORT project will:

1. Identify climate-induced ocean tipping points and attribute them to processes.
2. Quantify related impacts and establish multi-dimensional safe operating spaces.
3. Provide respective mitigation targets and options, as well as projected mitigation pathways.
4. Integrate stakeholder knowledge and provide new results including data to users.