Global climate-change trends detected in indicators of ocean ecology

Cael, B. B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1317-5718; Bisson, Kelsey; Boss, Emmanuel; Dutkiewicz, Stephanie; Henson, Stephanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3875-6802. 2023 Global climate-change trends detected in indicators of ocean ecology. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06321-z

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Abstract/Summary

Strong natural variability has been thought to mask possible climate-change-driven trends in phytoplankton populations from Earth-observing satellites. More than 30 years of continuous data were thought to be needed to detect a trend driven by climate change1. Here we show that climate-change trends emerge more rapidly in ocean colour (remote-sensing reflectance, Rrs), because Rrs is multivariate and some wavebands have low interannual variability. We analyse a 20-year Rrs time series from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite, and find significant trends in Rrs for 56% of the global surface ocean, mainly equatorward of 40°. The climate-change signal in Rrs emerges after 20 years in similar regions covering a similar fraction of the ocean in a state-of-the-art ecosystem model2, which suggests that our observed trends indicate shifts in ocean colour—and, by extension, in surface-ocean ecosystems—that are driven by climate change. On the whole, low-latitude oceans have become greener in the past 20 years.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06321-z
ISSN:	0028-0836
Date made live:	13 Jul 2023 12:12 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/535396

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