Identification

Title

Avoidable impacts of ocean warming on marine primary production: Insights from the CESM ensembles

Abstract

As anthropogenic emissions and warming continue to alter Earth's environment, it is essential to highlight future impacts that can be avoided through mitigation. Here we use two ensembles of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) run under the business-as-usual scenario, RCP 8.5, and the mitigation scenario, RCP 4.5, to identify avoidable impacts of anthropogenic warming on marine net primary production (NPP). We emphasize the use of ensembles so as to distinguish long-term, anthropogenic trends in marine productivity from internal variability. Twentieth century globally integrated marine NPP is 55.7 1PgC, with much of the variability attributable to certain regions (e.g., the equatorial Pacific). CESM projections indicate that global marine NPP will drop by approximate to 4% by 2080 if we follow RCP 8.5, but only by 2% under RCP 4.5. The response to warming on a global scale includes compensating regional effects; NPP increases in polar and eastern equatorial Pacific waters but decreases in the Atlantic, western Pacific, and Indian Oceans. The two main phytoplankton groups simulated in CESM show distinct responses: diatoms decrease their NPP, while small phytoplankton NPP increases over the mid-21st century. Trends in NPP from mid-21st century to 2080 are significantly different between the two emission scenarios mainly in the Atlantic Ocean basin and therefore impacts here are avoidable if we follow RCP 4.5, rather than RCP 8.5. In contrast, changes in NPP on a global scale and in most areas of the Pacific and Indian basins and the Southern Ocean are not distinguishable between forcing scenarios.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d77h1mc7

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact