Coastal News

Climate Change Imapcts on Our Seas - 15/7/10

The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) launched its latest annual report card on 15 July 2010 providing the very latest updates on how climate change is affecting our seas.

Almost 100 scientists from 40 leading UK science organisations, contributed to this peer-reviewed report, which covers 30 marine and coastal topics. The report includes a new regional seas climate change impacts map, which highlight important differences in climate change impacts across UK regional seas. These maps show that whilst many impacts are being seen in southern UK waters, future climate change will lead to impacts across all UK regional seas.

The report also takes a first look at how the UKCP09 climate projections can aid our understanding of future marine climate change impacts, and for the first time covers air-sea exchanges of CO2, deep-sea habitats, waterbirds and human health.

New findings in the 2010-2011 MCCIP annual report card include:

* Temperatures are generally increasing, but inter-annual variability is high; 2008 UK coastal sea surface temperatures were lower than the 2003 – 2007 mean.
* Some fish distributions have moved northwards over the past 30 years by distances ranging from around 50 to 400km, with coldwater species such as monkfish and snake blenny moving the furthest.
* climate change has contributed to a decrease by approximately 9% in the total number of seabirds breeding in the UK between 2000 and 2008. Breeding success has also declined over the same period.
* Increasing sea temperatures may have the potential to increase the geographic range of some harmful algal bloom species associated with Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) events.

MCCIP’s future work on marine adaptation through 'Marine Climate Smart Working' was also highlighted at the launch event. Building on the evidence base provided in the annual report cards, this new approach will provide a high profile vehicle to recognise the issues, challenges, opportunities and achievements faced by different users of the marine environment in attempting to put marine climate change adaptation in place.

Posted 20/07/2010 09:52

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