A study using satellite observations provides evidence for a climate-induced shift in the seas surrounding Antarctica that could have effects that ripple through the marine food web—and an impact on the Southern Ocean’s role as a carbon sink.
The article, published in Nature Climate Change, draws on satellite records for sea surface temperature, ocean color and sea-ice extent from ESA’s Climate Change Initiative and analyzed marker pigments in more than 14,000 in-situ samples to investigate changes in phytoplankton species composition over a 25-year period between 1997-2023.
The graphic shows the proportion of different types of phytoplankton—diatoms, haptophytes and cryptophytes (from left to right)—as a percentage of the total community according to chlorophyll content. The dotted line is the Antarctic continental shelf break.
Image Credit: ESA (Data source: Hayward, A. et al, 2025)
