Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) principal researcher, Dr Tommy Ryan-Keogh, will present the findings from a research study published in Nature’s scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment. The study reveals that climate models underestimate the global decline in the productivity caused by ocean warming.

An analysis of 26 years of data from a wide range of satellite algorithms shows a widespread decline in ocean productivity, affecting ocean ecosystem services. However, these declines are underestimated even by the most advanced climate models, which are designed to capture the relationships between ocean productivity and increasing ocean temperatures.