{"id":161537,"date":"2022-07-03T08:01:53","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T18:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=161537"},"modified":"2022-07-03T08:06:50","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T18:06:50","slug":"humpback-whales-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2022\/07\/03\/humpback-whales-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Humpback whales may steer clear of Hawai\u02bbi due to climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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(Photo credit: HIHWNMS\/NMFS ESA<\/abbr> Permit #782-1719)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Humpback whales may one day avoid Hawaiian waters due to climate change and rising greenhouse gasses, according the findings of a new paper<\/a> published in Frontiers in Marine Science<\/em> by a team of researchers including three University of Hawaiʻi<\/span> at M\u0101noa graduate students—Hannah von Hammerstein<\/strong> and Renee Setter<\/strong> from the Department of Geography and Environment<\/a> in the College of Social Sciences<\/a>, and Martin van Aswegen<\/strong> from the Marine Mammal Research Program<\/a> in the Institute for Marine Biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Humpback whales are known to migrate toward tropical coastal waters, such as Hawaiʻi<\/span>\u2019s, where they give birth to their calves. These areas lay in regions with sea surface temperatures ranging between 21 and 28 degrees Celsius (approximately 70–82 degrees Fahrenheit), and the whales typically return to the same sites annually.<\/p>\n

According to von Hammerstein, Setter, van Aswegen and co-researchers from the Pacific Whale Foundation, anthropogenic climate change is warming the oceans at unprecedented rates. At the current pace, it is likely that some of these breeding grounds will heat up past the 21–28℃ temperature range over the next century.<\/p>\n

Using a statistical “delta downscaling” method to increase the resolution of global sea surface temperatures and track the critical 21–28℃ isotherms (lines drawn on a map or chart joining points with the same temperature) that border humpback whale breeding grounds throughout the 21st century, research suggests two possible climate change scenarios:<\/p>\n