From the University of British Columbia via Eurekalert
Fish moving poleward at rate of 26 kilometers per decade
Large numbers of fish will disappear from the tropics by 2050, finds a new University of Britsh Columbia study that examined the impact of climate change on fish stocks. The study identified ocean hotspots for local fish extinction but also found that changing temperatures will drive more fish into the Arctic and Antarctic waters.
Using the same climate change scenarios as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers projected a large-scale shift of marine fish and invertebrates. In the worst-case scenario, where the Earth’s oceans warm by three degrees Celsius by 2100, fish could move away from their current habitats at a rate of 26 kilometres per decade. Under the best-case scenario, where the Earth warms by one degree Celsius, fish would move 15 kilometres every decade. This is consistent with changes in the last few decades.
“The tropics will be the overall losers,” says William Cheung, associate professor at the UBC Fisheries Centre and co-author of this study, published today in ICES Journal of Marine Science. “This area has a high dependence on fish for food, diet and nutrition. We’ll see a loss of fish populations that are important to the fisheries and communities in these regions.”
Cheung and his colleague used modeling to predict how 802 commercially important species of fish and invertebrates react to warming water temperatures, other changing ocean properties, and new habitats opening up at the poles.
“As fish move to cooler waters, this generates new opportunities for fisheries in the Arctic,” says Miranda Jones, a UBC Nereus Fellow and lead author of this study. “On the other hand it means it could disrupt the species that live there now and increase competition for resources.”
This study follows previous research that looked at change in fisheries catch in relation to ocean warming since 1970.
NOTE: Prof. William Cheung is travelling in Europe but is available for interviews. The best way to reach Prof Cheung is by email at: w.cheung@fisheries.ubc.ca
Models again? Is there any ACTUALLY OBSERVATIONAL DATA that this has occurred?
Didn’t think so.
“Large numbers of fish will disappear from the tropics by 2050”
Surely they know that the tropics are an ocean desert and always have been, right?
Fish happily hung out in tropical seas during the Cretaceous, Paleocene & Eocene, when oceans were much warmer than now.
The National Audubon Society used the same faulty IPCC model to generate another faulty model forecast of how the birds will move northward and lose their habitat.
Of course they used that to ask for donations to fight warming, etc.
Should generate millions for them.
EXCEPT – according to UAH and RSS the tropical lower troposphere
, between +20N and -20S have not warned since 1979…
So they drift north one inch every five minutes, so what ? It is just what one would expect during the interglacial. Comes the next ice cap, those wily buggers will drift south again.
Kip Hansen
October 11, 2014 at 9:34 am
You think that is impressive ? WWF ? it’s as good as Obama’s presidential qualifications.
Stephen Richards BSc Physic MSc solid State Physics APM, Inst O Physics all retired.
and I’m not impressed with my own. What impresses me is intelligence, honesty, willing to be proved wrong, looking to improve one’s knowledge and good working experience. Don’t see that in your bio.
Not my bio — Dr. Chung’s.
You’d have to know him personally, or have followed his career carefully, including reading all his published papers, attended his classes and lectures, and maybe gone out drinking with him to collect enough personal information to fulfill your requirements of being impressed. When you’ve done all that, you might qualify to make personal comments about him — but not here if they are negative.
I bet he doesn’t make negative comments about you — how could he?, he doesn’t know you. I don’t know him at all either.
So, stick to comments about his work and ideas.
It is beginning to sound like RealClimate, Joe Romm’s, or Skeptical Science in here — people who don’t know one another calling each other names and issuing ignorant smears against the characters and reputations of others.
Just not right.
I doubt they did any measurements. The assume fish can only enjoy the exact temperatures they live in now, and the model says that “ideal temperature” will move 26 miles toward the poles each year. They have no idea if the temps are really doing that, and they have no idea if the fish will really move. The fish might really be hanging out there, because they like the available food which isn’t moving.
If I knew it was so easy to get government grants for this BS, I would have become a postdoc.
I remember the El Niño of 1997~8 changed the fish being served in restaurants in Peru. Not less fish, just different species.