Climate change is affecting ocean temperature, acidity, currents, and primary production, causing shifts in species distributions, marine ecosystems, and ultimately fisheries. Earth system models simulate climate change impacts on physical and biogeochemical properties of future oceans under varying emissions scenarios. Coupling these simulations with an ensemble of global marine ecosystem models has indicated broad decreases of fish biomass with warming. However, regional details of these impacts remain much more uncertain. Here, we employ CMIP5 and CMIP6 climate change impact projections using two Earth system models coupled with four regional and nine global marine ecosystem models in 10 ocean regions to evaluate model agreement at regional scales. We find that models developed at different scales can lead to stark differences in biomass projections. On average, global models projected greater biomass declines by the end of the 21st century than regional models. For both global and regional models, greater biomass declines were projected using CMIP6 than CMIP5 simulations. Global models projected biomass declines in 86% of CMIP5 simulations for ocean regions compared to 50% for regional models in the same ocean regions. In CMIP6 simulations, all global model simulations projected biomass declines in ocean regions by 2100, while regional models projected biomass declines in 67% of the ocean region simulations. Our analysis suggests that improved understanding of the causes of differences between global and regional marine ecosystem model climate change projections is needed, alongside observational evaluation of modeled responses.

Key Points

• Global marine ecosystem models projected greater biomass declines with climate change than regional marine ecosystem models for many regions
• For both global and regional models, greater biomass declines were projected in CMIP6 than CMIP5 and in IPSL versus GFDL simulations
• Projected impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems at regional scales are currently less certain than at global scale

Plain Language Summary

Climate change is affecting the world's oceans, marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and the ecosystem services that they support, including fisheries that feed millions of people worldwide. Anticipating the impacts of climate change can help society and managers to prepare for, and adapt to, changes ahead. Present understanding of climate change impacts on the world's oceans based on global models indicates a 5% loss in animal biomass with every 1°C that the planet warms. Here, we compare potential future biomass on regional scales that are most relevant for management decisions about sustainable resource use. We used regional scale ecosystem models tailored to the species and fisheries they represent. We compared climate change projections of ocean biomass changes from these regional models to corresponding areas from global models to see how well they agreed. We found key differences in climate change projections of ocean biomass between global and regional models. In some cases, both global and regional models projected biomass declines, while in others global models suggested a decline and regional models an increase. Our study highlights that we need further exploration and understanding of the differences in ocean biomass change between global and regional marine ecosystem models.