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Climate and cyclic hydrobiological changes of the Barents Sea from the twentieth to twenty-first centuries

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Abstract

The Barents Sea is a transition zone between North Atlantic and Arctic waters, so its marine ecosystem is highly sensitive to climate dynamics. Understanding of marine biota response to climate changes is necessary to assess the environmental stability and the state of marketable biological resources. These processes are analyzed using a database from the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute which holds oceanographic and hydrobiological data sets collected for more than 100 years along the meridional Kola Transect in the Barents Sea. The data demonstrate high variability in thermal state of the upper layer of the Barents Sea, which is regulated by varying the inflow of Atlantic water and by regional climate. At irregular intervals, cold periods with extended seasonal ice cover are followed by warm periods. The most recent warm period started in the late 1980s and reached its maximum from 2001 to 2006. These cyclic changes in hydrologic regime across the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first century are reflected (with a specific lag of 1–5 years) by changes in species composition, as well as abundance and distribution of boreal and arctic groups of macrozoobenthos and fish fauna. For instance, cod and cod fisheries in the Barents Sea are closely linked to the marine climate. Furthermore, Kamchatka crab stock recruitment benefited from the warm climate of 1989 and 1990. In general, studies in this region have shown that climatic dynamics may be assessed using biological indices of abundance, biomass, and migration of marine organisms, including commercial species.

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Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper have been reviewed by Prof. Dr. Gotthilf Hempel. The authors greatly appreciate his constructive criticism and suggestions. The authors are also sincerely grateful to Prof. Dr. Dieter Piepenburg for many useful comments and to Mr. Roman Mikhalyuk for translating the paper into English. Three anonymous referees in two review rounds provided helpful comments for improving the manuscript.

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  1. Murmansk Marine Biological Institute, Kola Scientific Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimirskaya St. 17, 183010, Murmansk, Russia

    Gennady Matishov, Denis Moiseev, Olga Lyubina, Aleksandr Zhichkin, Sergey Dzhenyuk, Oleg Karamushko & Elena Frolova

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  1. Gennady Matishov
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  2. Denis Moiseev
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  3. Olga Lyubina
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  7. Elena Frolova
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Correspondence to Denis Moiseev.

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Matishov, G., Moiseev, D., Lyubina, O. et al. Climate and cyclic hydrobiological changes of the Barents Sea from the twentieth to twenty-first centuries. Polar Biol 35, 1773–1790 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-012-1237-9

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