| AUTHORS | Irene Rivetti (1), Ferdinando Boero (1,2,4), Simonetta Fraschetti (1), Enrico Zambianchi (3), Piero Lionello (1,2) |
| AFFILIATIONS | - Dipartimento Di Scienze E Tecnologie Biologiche Ed Ambientali, Università Del Salento, Conisma Lecce (Italy)
- Cmcc Euro-mediterranean Center On Climate Change 73100 Lecce (Italy)
- Dipartimento Di Scienze Per L'ambiente, Università Degli Studi Di Napoli "Parthenope", CoNISMa, 80143 Napoli
- Istituto Di Scienze Marine Del Cnr 16149 Genova (Italy)
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| ABSTRACT | The mixed layer in the Mediterranean exhibits large a large annual cycle, interannual variability and widespread trends, including a widespread increase of its depth and temperature in the last three decades, with the unique exception of cooling in spring. Mixed layer anomalies are particularly relevant for benthic invertebrates, as their extremes may determine environmental conditions beyond the tolerance of some species. This study is based on approximately 200,000 hydrographic temperature profiles available for the Mediterranean Sea, including bottles, MBT, XBT and CTD, that were principally obtained from the MEDAR/MEDATLAS database. Data have been processed with an automatic procedure to extract 4 simple parameters describing the upper water column (mixed layer depth, temperature, thermocline base depth and temperature). Results show clearly the link between mixed layer warm anomalies and mass mortalities of benthic invertebrates. However, this study shows that past monitoring is not sufficient to clearly demonstrate an impact of climate change on these mass mortalities and a systematic strategy combining the observation of both ecosystem and physical indicators is required.
(Refs: 1 Rivetti, I., Fraschetti, S., Lionello, P., Zambianchi, E., Boero, F., 2014. Global Warming and Mass Mortalities of Benthic Invertebrates in the Mediterranean Sea. Plos One 9(12), e115655.; 2 Rivetti, I., Boero, F., Fraschetti, S., Zambianchi, E., Lionello, P., 2016. Anomalies of the upper water column in the Mediterranean Sea. Global and Planetary Change. Corrected proofs available online at, doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2016.03.001) |