Oysters at risk from changing climate | Yoann Thomas

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Oct. 9, 2018 (Phys.org) -- Climate change's effect on coastal ecosystems is very likely to increase mortality risks of adult oyster populations in the next 20 years.

That is the finding of a new study led by the University of Nantes, the LEMAR (the Marine Environmental Science Laboratory) in Plouzané and the Cerfacs (European center for research and advanced training in scientific computing) in Toulouse (France).

Published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the research highlights a novel and comprehensive relationship between climate variability and historical mortality of adult oysters on the French Atlantic coast from 1993 to 2015.

The team's results show oyster mortality usually increases after warm and wet winters over Northern Europe, affected by recurrent storms embedded in large weather circulation patterns covering the whole North Atlantic basin – known as the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

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