A new biodiversity index captures the climate risk for nearly 25,000 marine species and their ecosystems and lays the groundwork for climate-smart approaches to management and conservation.
Warming oceans and climate extremes are driving species into deeper, more northern and cooler locations, altering their behaviour and reconfiguring marine ecosystems in radical and unprecedented ways.
Just as a report card grades students on subjects such as math and science, we assessed each species on 12 specific climate risk factors depending on two different future scenarios — one with lower emissions and one with higher emissions. In the high emissions scenario, the global average ocean temperature will increase by three to five degrees Celcius by 2100. Under this scenario, almost 90 per cent of the 25,000 species we assessed were at a “high” or “critical” climate risk. The average species was at risk across 85 per cent of its geographic range.
This represents yet another example of climate inequality wherein low-income countries that have contributed the least to climate change, and are more aggressively reducing their emissions, are experiencing its worst impacts while having the lowest capacity to adapt to them.
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