November 13, 2024 — Massachusetts Bay is changing: It’s getting hotter, more acidic, and harsher around the edges.
Native fish species are fleeing north or dying in marine heat waves. Powerful storms are kicking up pollution that was settled at the bottom of riverbeds and carrying those damaging contaminants into the bay. Humans, to protect ourselves against rising seas, are constructing hard walls that force out soft marshland habitats.
Those are some of the key findings in a new sweeping review of the latest climate science on Massachusetts’ marine ecosystems, which comes the same week that nations are meeting in Azerbaijan for the United Nation’s annual climate summit, this year called COP29.
The Boston Research Advisory Group report found that deadly hot marine heat waves — once extremely rare — could become commonplace. Scientists warn that those and other impacts are only going to get worse if the climate continues to warm with dire and possibly irreversible impacts on the ocean.
If the planet does not stop emitting planet-warming greenhouse gasses, marine heat waves could occur off the coast of Massachusetts once every decade if the planet reaches 2 degrees Celsius of warming and perhaps every other year with 3 degrees of warming. The vast majority of excess heat generated by anthropogenic warming is absorbed by the planet’s oceans.