Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Global imprint of climate change on marine life

Abstract

Past meta-analyses of the response of marine organisms to climate change have examined a limited range of locations1,2, taxonomic groups2,3,4 and/or biological responses5,6. This has precluded a robust overview of the effect of climate change in the global ocean. Here, we synthesized all available studies of the consistency of marine ecological observations with expectations under climate change. This yielded a meta-database of 1,735 marine biological responses for which either regional or global climate change was considered as a driver. Included were instances of marine taxa responding as expected, in a manner inconsistent with expectations, and taxa demonstrating no response. From this database, 81–83% of all observations for distribution, phenology, community composition, abundance, demography and calcification across taxa and ocean basins were consistent with the expected impacts of climate change. Of the species responding to climate change, rates of distribution shifts were, on average, consistent with those required to track ocean surface temperature changes. Conversely, we did not find a relationship between regional shifts in spring phenology and the seasonality of temperature. Rates of observed shifts in species’ distributions and phenology are comparable to, or greater, than those for terrestrial systems.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Global distribution and regional location of marine ecological climate-impact studies.
Figure 2: Global response rates to climate change by taxon.
Figure 3: Marine biological responses as a function of the velocity of climate change and seasonal climate shift.
Figure 4: Proportion of marine observations consistent with climate change predictions using observations from both single- and multispecies studies (all, n = 1,323) and multispecies studies alone (n = 1,151).

References

  1. Tasker, M. L. The Effect of Climate Change on the Distribution And Abundance of Marine Species in the OSPAR Maritime Area ICES Coop. Res. Rep. No. 293 (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, 2008).

  2. Chen, I. C., Hill, J. K., Ohlemuller, R., Roy, D. B. & Thomas, C. D. Rapid range shifts of species associated with high levels of climate warming. Science 333, 1024–1026 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Root, T. L. et al. Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants. Nature 421, 57–60 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Rosenzweig, C. et al. Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change. Nature 453, 353–358 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Przeslawski, R., Falkner, I., Ashcroft, M. B. & Hutchings, P. Using rigorous selection criteria to investigate marine range shifts. Estuar. Coast. Shelf Sci. 113, 205–212 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Sorte, C. J. B., Williams, S. L. & Carlton, J. T. Marine range shifts and species introductions: Comparative spread rates and community impacts. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 19, 303–316 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. IPCC Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (eds Parry, M. L., Canziani, O. F., Palutikof, J. P., van der Linden, P. J. & Hanson, C. E.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).

  8. Burrows, M. T. et al. The pace of shifting climate in marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Science 334, 652–655 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Hoegh-Guldberg, O. & Bruno, J. F. The impact of climate change on the World’s marine ecosystems. Science 328, 1523–1528 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Doney, S. C. et al. Climate change impacts on marine ecosystems. Ann. Rev. Mar. Sci. 4, 11–37 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Parmesan, C. & Yohe, G. A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature 421, 37–42 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Parmesan, C. Influences of species, latitudes and methodologies on estimates of phenological response to global warming. Glob. Change Biol. 13, 1860–1872 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Sunday, J. M., Bates, A. E. & Dulvy, N. K. Thermal tolerance and the global redistribution of animals. Nature Clim. Change 2, 686–690 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Loarie, S. R. et al. The velocity of climate change. Nature 462, 1052–1055 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Van der Wal, J. et al. Focus on poleward shifts in species’ distributions underestimates the fingerprint of climate change. Nature Clim. Change 3, 239–243 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Parmesan, C. et al. Beyond climate change attribution in conservation and ecological research. Ecol. Lett. 16, 58–71 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Devictor, V. et al. Differences in the climate debts of birds and butterflies at a continental scale. Nature Clim. Change 2, 121–124 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Mueter, F. J. & Litzow, M. A. Sea ice retreat alters the biogeography of the Bering Sea continental shelf. Ecol. Appl. 18, 309–320 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Beaugrand, G. Decadal changes in climate and ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas. Deep-Sea Res. II 56, 656–673 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Wolkovich, E. M. et al. Warming experiments underpredict plant phenological responses to climate change. Nature 485, 494–497 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Edwards, M. & Richardson, A. J. Impact of climate change on marine pelagic phenology and trophic mismatch. Nature 430, 881–884 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Pau, S. et al. Predicting phenology by integrating ecology, evolution and climate science. Glob. Change Biol. 17, 3633–3643 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Sapiano, M. R. P., Brown, C. W., Schollaert, Uz, S. & Vargas, M. Establishing a global climatology of marine phytoplankton phenological characteristics. J. Geophys. Res. 117, C08026 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Parmesan, C., Duarte, C., Poloczanska, E., Richardson, A. J. & Singer, M. C. Overstretching attribution. Nature Clim. Change 1, 2–4 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Levitus, S. et al. Global ocean heat content 1955-2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L07608 (2009).

    Google Scholar 

  26. Barnett, T. P. et al. Penetration of human-induced warming into the world’s oceans. Science 309, 284–287 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Ling, S. D. & Johnson, C. R. Population dynamics of an ecologically important range-extender: Kelp beds versus sea urchin barrens. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 374, 113–125 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was conducted as a part of the Understanding Marine Biological Impacts of Climate Change Working Group supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, a centre funded by NSF (Grant #EF-0553768), the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the State of California.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

E.S.P. and A.J.R. led the NCEAS working group. E.S.P., A.J.R., C.J.B., P.J.M., S.A.T. and W.J.S. extracted data from publications for the database. E.S.P., A.J.R. and C.B. undertook quality-control of the database. E.S.P., C.P. and W.J.S. wrote the first draft of the paper. W.K., C.J.B., A.J.R., M.T.B., E.S.P. and D.S.S. ran analyses and produced figures and tables. All authors contributed equally to discussion of ideas, development of the database and analyses, and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Elvira S. Poloczanska or Christopher J. Brown.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Poloczanska, E., Brown, C., Sydeman, W. et al. Global imprint of climate change on marine life. Nature Clim Change 3, 919–925 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1958

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1958

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing