Five ocean hotspots share more than just heat
Five Southern Hemisphere warming hotspots keep rapid SST rise, but acidification is unlikely to be the main 21st-century threat there.
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From global to regional and back again: common climate stressors of marine ecosystems relevant for adaptation across five ocean warming hotspots
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Five ocean hotspots share more than just heat
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
The analysis used 23 models from the CMIP5 archive.
we repeated the analysis for the 23 models from the CMIP5 archive
Subtropical western boundary currents are warming two to three times faster than the global ocean mean.
waters of subtropical western boundary currents are warming two to three times faster than the global mean for the world's oceans
What they did
Mapped CMIP5 SST hotspots and used a NEMO earth-system run under RCP8.5 to compare SST, mixing, nitrate, primary production, oxygen, aragonite, and currents off eastern Australia, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Madagascar.
What they found
SST rise is unequivocal; other drivers are noisier; aragonite undersaturation is unlikely in these five hotspots this century; circulation shifts (especially the East Australian Current) are an extra stressor.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Does not measure local fisheries catch or community adaptation outcomes, and coarse models miss some tropical hotspot dynamics.
Key terms
- SST hotspot
- Marine region in the fastest-warming 10% of the ocean.
- CMIP5
- Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate-model archive.
- RCP8.5
- High greenhouse-gas concentration pathway used for 21st-century projections.
- Aragonite saturation (Ω)
- How close seawater is to dissolving aragonite shells and skeletons.
- Deoxygenation
- Loss of dissolved oxygen that stresses marine animals.
- GULLS
- Partnership on reducing vulnerability of marine-dependent coastal communities.
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Focal hotspot coasts include:
Common questions
How many focal hotspots?
Five Southern Hemisphere regions.
CMIP5 models?
23 models.
Acidification threat there this century?
Unlikely to be major in the five foci.
Baseline window?
1990–2010 ± two SD.
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