Climate change impacts on coastal and pelagic environments in the southeastern Bay of Biscay

Abstract

According to the projections of global climate models provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4, IPCC 2007), under future greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenarios, a warming of the mean surface air and sea of the Bay of Biscay (for locations, see Fig. A direct consequence of seawater warming is the thermal expansion of oceans, together with a rise in the thermosteric mean sea level Extensive literature covers future threats of global climate change expected for the next century over the world oceans (e.g. Reid et al. 2009) and coasts (see reviews by However, the resolution of all of the atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) is insufficient for predicting changes in