Projecting effects of climate change on marine systems: is the mean all that matters?

Studies dealing with the effects of changing global temperatures on living organisms typically concentrate on annual mean temperatures. This, however, might not be the best approach in temperate systems with large seasonality where the mean annual temperature is actually not experienced very frequently. The mean annual temperature across a 50-year, daily time series of measurements at Helgoland Roads (54.2° N, 7.9° E) is 10.1°C while seasonal data are characterized by a clear, bimodal distribution; temperatures are around 6°C in winter and 15°C in summer with rapid transitions in spring and autumn. Across those 50 years, the temperature at which growth is maximal for each single bloom event for 115 phytoplankton species (more than 6000 estimates of optimal temperature) mirrors the bimodal distribution of the in situ temperatures. Moreover, independent laboratory data on temperature optima for growth of North Sea organisms yielded similar results: a deviance from the normal distribution, with a gap close to the mean annual temperature, and more optima either above or below this temperature. We conclude that organisms, particularly those that are short-lived, are either adapted to the prevailing winter or summer temperatures in temperate areas and that few species exist with thermal optima within the periods characterized by rapid spring warming and autumn cooling.