Climate change over the Mediterranean and current destruction of marine ecosystem

Abstract

AbstractThe Mediterranean is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change and its summer climate is known to be affected by the South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) through the monsoon–desert teleconnection. In future, rainfall is expected to increase not only over the SASM area but also over the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and equatorial Atlantic regions. Here we show that the remote forcing regions affect the Mediterranean climate in the future. A subset of CMIP5 climate simulations exhibits an increase in the descending motion over the Western Mediterranean in the future. This strengthened subsidence comes from the SASM, EASM, and Atlantic forcings: the SASM and EASM heating induces the Gill-type Rossby wave response, and the Atlantic forcing causes the northeastward wave energy propagation. The sea surface temperature change over the Western Mediterranean is consistent with the subsidence change both in the future and in the recent decades. The chlorophyll-a concentration and fisheries landings have decreased in the recent period along with sea surface temperature warming. Our results suggest that special attention is required to conserve the marine ecosystem in the Mediterranean as climate warms.