Insight into real-world complexities is required to enable effective response from the aquaculture sector to climate change

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Abstract

This study demonstrates how a comprehensive knowledge base can be used by the aquaculture industry, researchers, and policymakers as a foundation for more targeted and detailed climate change impact analysis, risk assessments and adaptation planning. Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar) production in Norway was used as a case study and to illustrate the need to consider impacts from multiple stressors across different production stages and the wider supply chain. Based on literature searches and industry news, a total of 45 impacts and 101 adaptation responses were identified. Almost all impacts were linked to multiple climate stressors, and many adaptation responses can be used for a range of impacts. Based on the research, a move towards more targeted and detailed assessments is recommended. This can be facilitated through a strong knowledge base, further research to address complexities, and better communication between all stakeholders. The results also demonstrate the need for more climate change research that reflects the challenges that the aquaculture sector faces, where multiple stressors and the range of impacts across production stages and the wider supply chain are included. Highlighting the wide range of stressors, impacts and adaptation responses provides a more holistic understanding of the real-world complexities that aquaculture producers face. This again could facilitate adoption of more effective responses to climate change needed to maintain or increase production sustainably.

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Influence of extreme weather disasters on global crop production.

Corey Lesk, Pedram Rowhani, Navin Ramankutty (2016)

In recent years, several extreme weather disasters have partially or completely damaged regional crop production. While detailed regional accounts of the effects of extreme weather disasters exist, the global scale effects of droughts, floods and extreme temperature on crop production are yet to be quantified. Here we estimate for the first time, to our knowledge, national cereal production losses across the globe resulting from reported extreme weather disasters during 1964-2007. We show that droughts and extreme heat significantly reduced national cereal production by 9-10%, whereas our analysis could not identify an effect from floods and extreme cold in the national data. Analysing the underlying processes, we find that production losses due to droughts were associated with a reduction in both harvested area and yields, whereas extreme heat mainly decreased cereal yields. Furthermore, the results highlight ~7% greater production damage from more recent droughts and 8-11% more damage in developed countries than in developing ones. Our findings may help to guide agricultural priorities in international disaster risk reduction and adaptation efforts.

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Longer and more frequent marine heatwaves over the past century

Eric C. J. Oliver, Markus Donat, Michael T Burrows … (2018)

Heatwaves are important climatic extremes in atmospheric and oceanic systems that can have devastating and long-term impacts on ecosystems, with subsequent socioeconomic consequences. Recent prominent marine heatwaves have attracted considerable scientific and public interest. Despite this, a comprehensive assessment of how these ocean temperature extremes have been changing globally is missing. Using a range of ocean temperature data including global records of daily satellite observations, daily in situ measurements and gridded monthly in situ-based data sets, we identify significant increases in marine heatwaves over the past century. We find that from 1925 to 2016, global average marine heatwave frequency and duration increased by 34% and 17%, respectively, resulting in a 54% increase in annual marine heatwave days globally. Importantly, these trends can largely be explained by increases in mean ocean temperatures, suggesting that we can expect further increases in marine heatwave days under continued global warming.

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Marine heatwaves under global warming

Erich M. Fischer, Thomas L Frölicher, Nicolas Gruber (2018)

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are periods of extreme warm sea surface temperature that persist for days to months1 and can extend up to thousands of kilometres2. Some of the recently observed marine heatwaves revealed the high vulnerability of marine ecosystems3-11 and fisheries12-14 to such extreme climate events. Yet our knowledge about past occurrences15 and the future progression of MHWs is very limited. Here we use satellite observations and a suite of Earth system model simulations to show that MHWs have already become longer-lasting and more frequent, extensive and intense in the past few decades, and that this trend will accelerate under further global warming. Between 1982 and 2016, we detect a doubling in the number of MHW days, and this number is projected to further increase on average by a factor of 16 for global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial levels and by a factor of 23 for global warming of 2.0 degrees Celsius. However, current national policies for the reduction of global carbon emissions are predicted to result in global warming of about 3.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the twenty-first century16, for which models project an average increase in the probability of MHWs by a factor of 41. At this level of warming, MHWs have an average spatial extent that is 21 times bigger than in preindustrial times, last on average 112 days and reach maximum sea surface temperature anomaly intensities of 2.5 degrees Celsius. The largest changes are projected to occur in the western tropical Pacific and Arctic oceans. Today, 87 per cent of MHWs are attributable to human-induced warming, with this ratio increasing to nearly 100 per cent under any global warming scenario exceeding 2 degrees Celsius. Our results suggest that MHWs will become very frequent and extreme under global warming, probably pushing marine organisms and ecosystems to the limits of their resilience and even beyond, which could cause irreversible changes.