Thursday October 6, 2022
The Conversation —
Climate change impacts marine life through a bewildering web of complex pathways.
Warming oceans and climate extremes are driving species into deeper, more northern and cooler locations, altering their behaviour and reconfiguring marine ecosystems in radical and unprecedented ways.
While some impacts can be beneficial, many are harmful, making it difficult to understand the overall effects of climate on individual species and ecosystems. Despite these challenges, we urgently need to understand how changing climate conditions affect marine life to plan and develop adaptation approaches to steward it effectively under climate change.
In our new study, my co-authors and I developed the Climate Risk Index for Biodiversity, which captures the climate risk for nearly 25,000 marine species and their ecosystems. This new index lays the groundwork for supporting climate-smart approaches to managing and conserving marine life.