Climate change rapidly warms and acidifies Australian estuaries.

ABSTRACT: Climate change is impacting ecosystems worldwide. Estuaries are diverse and important aquatic ecosystems; and yet until now we have lacked information on the response of estuaries to climate change. Here we present data from a twelve-year monitoring program, involving 6200 observations of 166 estuaries along >1100 kilometres of the Australian coastline encompassing all estuary morphologies. Estuary temperatures increased by 2.16 °C on average over 12 years, at a rate of 0.2 °C year^-1, with waters acidifying at a rate of 0.09 pH units and freshening at 0.086 PSU year^-1. The response of estuaries to climate change is dependent on their morphology. Lagoons and rivers are warming and acidifying at the fastest rate because of shallow average depths and limited oceanic exch

SUBMITTER: Scanes E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7156424 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature