Climate change drove Alaska snow crab collapse, study says - eenews.net
Climate change drove Alaska snow crab collapse, study says - E&E News by POLITICO
The ecological collapse of snow crabs in Alaska’s southeastern Bering Sea is almost entirely attributable to human-induced climate warming, new NOAA research found.
In a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, NOAA Fisheries scientists said the gradual warming process called “borealization” — essentially the shift from Arctic to sub-Arctic conditions — is the primary driver of the disappearance of snow crabs from their native habitat.
Scientists say the findings foreshadow what’s likely to be a continuing snow crab decline based on projected warming of between 1 and 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
Moreover, models suggest the southeastern Bering sea will experience Arctic conditions in only 8 percent of future years, a condition that could “potentially signal the northward displacement of the important commercial fishery from its traditional grounds,” the agency said in a release.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.