Malin is off to the Ecological Society of America meeting in Sacramento, CA next week, in part to run a special symposium on Thursday afternoon, “Climate and Beyond: Cumulative Impacts and Species Range Shifts” with Adam Wolf and Morgan Tingley. They have a great line-up of speakers, so come check it out! Malin will be presenting some of the lab’s new work on the interaction between climate velocity, fishing, and marine protected areas.
Pinsky lab contributes to National Climate Assessment
Maybe you saw the front page of the New York Times last Tuesday? It had the image here, and it was highlighting the publication of a new report from the federal government called the National Climate Assessment. Think of it like the IPCC report, but for the U.S., and it represented the work of hundreds if not thousands of scientists synthesizing everything we know about climate and its impact on this country. It’s fantastic to see it get this attention!
We got to see one small corner of this report in the making, since Malin was on the team that wrote the 296 page “technical input” report on Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Ecosystem Services. It was a long and deliberate process… it started with conference calls through the fall of 2011, then a meeting with dozens of experts in Palo Alto, CA to flesh out the major pieces of the report. Then writing and revising through the spring of 2012, including a special box on “Climate Impacts on New England Fisheries” that we wrote. From there, a federal committee made up of academic and government scientists synthesized all the technical input reports, plus other materials into a draft National Climate Assessment. That was posted online in January 2013 for 90 days of public comments (more than 4000 received and responded to) and extensive peer review, including from the National Academies.
And then… drumroll, the final report came out this May, 2014, all 829 pages of it (don’t be too intimidated, though: the website they put together is beautiful and accessible). Wow, that was a long process. But if it has the power and authority to affect the actions of our federal, state, and local governments, plus change public attitudes and business planning, it’s entirely worth it. Oh, and that box on New England fisheries? Find it here, in the Oceans chapter of the final National Climate Assessment.
New paper in Science shows that marine species follow climate velocity
As ocean temperatures change, fish that provide food for people around the world are moving into new territories. While it’s been common to talk about broad expectations like species shifting towards the poles as the climate warms, the problem has been that many species are not shifting towards the poles, and even of those species that are, some are shifting quickly and others slowly. In a paper out today in Science, we show that the trick to more precise forecasts is to follow local temperature changes, expressed as climate velocities.
Climate velocities are the rate and direction that temperatures move across the seascape. The findings suggest that climate velocity will be a powerful tool for forecasting future range shifts and have implications for marine conservation and fisheries management. Transient populations are especially vulnerable to overexploitation.
Press coverage includes BBC Radio, LA Times, CBC, ScienceNow, ClimateWire, the Southern Fried Science blog, and EuropaPress. Princeton also has a blog post.
As one example, lobster in the northeastern United States (above) moved north at a pace of 43 miles per decade. (Video by Leah Lewis and D. Richardson, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Climate adaptation workshop gets press attention in Maine
Malin was interviewed for the WMTW evening news and an article in the Portland Press Herald (both of Portland, ME) about adapting fisheries to climate change as part of a workshop hosted by the Island Institute. His research was also featured in a Bangor Daily News article.
The human face of climate change
Nature Climate Change ran a feature story on Mike Fogarty and Malin’s earlier paper in Climatic Change Letters. To quote the story: “Adaptation to climate change in fisheries is occurring very rapidly. Research now shows that it is a complex process whose outcomes can both mitigate and exacerbate impacts on fish populations.” How people respond and the coping responses they use are an important part of the story.
Study highlights how fisheries are likely to respond to climate change
National assessment of the climate
Every few years, the Federal government issues a “state of the climate” report, and for the first time ever, this will detail the impacts and expected impacts of climate change on marine ecosystem services. The technical report (Malin is a co-author) is now online at the National Climate Assessment website, the PDF is here.
Upcoming talk at ESA
Malin will talk about his ongoing research on climate and marine range shifts at the Ecological Society of America: August 6, 1:30pm, COS 5-1.
Best Presentation on climate change?
Malin’s talk at the “Effects of Climate Change on the World’s Oceans” conference (May 2012, Yeosu, South Korea) went over well: it won Best Oral Presentation. The talk was titled, “How predictable are species distribution shifts? Testing hypotheses against four decades of observations.”