Too hot to handle? An urgent need to understand climate change impacts on the biogeochemistry of tropical coastal waters

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Date
2023-12-12
Authors
Carreira, Cátia
Joyce, Patrick W. S.
Morán, Xosé Anxelu G.
Carvalho, Susana
Falkenberg, Laura
Lønborg, Christian
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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Abstract
Tropical regions contain ecologically and socio‐economically important habitats, and are home to about 3.8 billion people, many of which directly depend on tropical coastal waters for their well‐being. At the basis of these ecosystems are biogeochemical processes. Climate change is expected to have a greater impact in the tropics compared to temperate regions because of the relatively stable environmental conditions found there. However, it was surprising to find only 660 research articles published focusing on the impact of climate change on the biogeochemistry of coastal tropical waters compared to 4823 for temperate waters. In this perspective, we highlight important topics in need of further research. Specifically, we suggest that in tropical regions compared to temperate counterparts climate change stressors will be experienced differently, that organisms have a lower acclimation capacity, and that long‐term baseline biogeochemical datasets useful for quantifying future changes are lacking. The low number of research papers on the impacts of climate change in coastal tropical regions is likely due to a mix of reasons including limited resources for research and limited number of long time series in many developing tropical countries. Finally, we propose some action points that we hope will stimulate more studies in tropical coastal waters.
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Acclimation , Biogeochemistry , Climate change , Coastal waters , Datasets , Impact , Knowledge gap , Stressors , Tropic
Citation
Carreira, C., Joyce, P. W. S., Morán, X. A. G., Carvalho, S., Falkenberg, L. and Lønborg, C. (2023) 'Too hot to handle? An urgent need to understand climate change impacts on the biogeochemistry of tropical coastal waters', Global Change Biology, 30, e17074 (5pp). https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17074
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© 2023, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Carreira, C., Joyce, P. W. S., Morán, X. A. G., Carvalho, S., Falkenberg, L. and Lønborg, C. (2023) 'Too hot to handle? An urgent need to understand climate change impacts on the biogeochemistry of tropical coastal waters', Global Change Biology, 30, e17074 (5pp), https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17074, which has been published in final form at: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17074 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.