Impacts of climate change on European marine ecosystems: Observations, expectations and indicators

By Catharina J. M. Philippart, R. Anadón, Roberto Danovaro, J. Dippner, K. Drinkwater, S. Hawkins, Temel Oguz, G. O’Sullivan, Philip C. Reid. 2011

321 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Northern Hemisphere has been warmer since 1980 than at any other time during the last 2000 years. The observed increase in temperature has been generally higher in northern than in southern European seas, and higher in enclosed than in open seas. Although European marine ecosystems are influenced by many other factors, such as nutrient enrichment and overfishing, every region has shown at least some changes that were most likely attributable to recent climate change. It is expected that within open systems there will generally be (further) northward movement of species, leading to a switch from polar to more temperate species in the northern seas such as the Arctic, Barents Sea and the Nordic Seas, and subtropical species moving northward to temperate regions such as the Iberian upwelling margin. For seas that are highly influenced by river runoff, such as the Baltic Sea, an increase in freshwater due to enhanced rainfall will lead to a shift from marine to more brackish and even freshwater species. If semi-enclosed systems such as the Mediterranean and the Black Sea lose their endemic species, the associated niches will probably be filled by species originating from adjacent waters and, possibly, with species transported from one region to another via ballast water and the Suez Canal. A better understanding of potential climate change impacts (scenarios) at both regional and local levels, the development of improved methods to quantify the uncertainty of climate change projections, the construction of usable climate change indicators, and an improvement of the interface between science and policy formulation in terms of risk assessment will be essential to formulate and inform better adaptive strategies to address the inevitable consequences of climate change.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fda05691f3d3f79e7914e928aebee848d5412e60

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Citations in the corpus

Quantitative approaches in climate change ecology (2011, background): “For instance, the northern North Sea cools southwards, and species in this region may be moving towards the equator with ocean warming (Perry et al., 2005; Philippart et al., 2011).”
Impacts of climate change in a global hotspot for temperate marine biodiversity and ocean warming (2011, background): “…scaleprocess suchas climate change cannot be studied or prepared for unless the compounding or mediating effects of local scale influences (e.g. eutrophication, over-fishing) on climate change responses are also recognised (see also Philippart et al., 2011-this issue; Schiel, 2011-this issue).”
The rise of Laminaria ochroleuca in the Western English Channel (UK) and comparisons with its competitor and assemblage dominant Laminaria hyperborea (2015, background): “Temperatures along much of the Northeast Atlantic coastline are predicted to increase by a further >2 °C by Marine Ecology 36 (2015) 1033–1044 ª 2014 Blackwell Verlag GmbH 1033 2090 (Philippart et al. 2011), with major implications for marine ecosystems.”
Effects of seawater pCO2 and temperature on shell growth, shell stability, condition and cellular stress of Western Baltic Sea Mytilus edulis (L.) and Arctica islandica (L.) (2013, background): “islandica: 15 C treatment) and/or high sw pCO2 treatment (1,148–1,655 latm) scenarios are not far away from conditions predicted for the year 2100 (Philippart et al. 2011; Thomsen et al. 2010; Melzner et al. 2012) and equally high sw temperatures in combination with high sw pCO2 might become common ”
The decline of mussel aquaculture in the European Union: causes, economic impacts and opportunities (2020, background): “Climate change has started affecting environmental parameters and more is to come: temperature increase in the ocean, sea level rise, ocean acidification, changes in rainfall and therefore salinity, and the concentration and quality of nutrients (Philippart et al. 2011).”