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Vertical climate velocity adds a critical dimension to species shifts

Nature Climate Change volume 15, pages 656–664 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate responses of marine organisms differ from those on land as marine species have the flexibility to move vertically. While horizontal climate velocity has been used to predict poleward range shifts, many species are not moving as expected. Incorporating shifts in depth, which have received less attention, may better explain climate responses of marine organisms. Here we assess vertical and horizontal climate velocities across 63 global large marine ecosystems and find that 77% of vertical climate velocities are negative, reflecting isotherm deepening. Vertical climate velocity is 10,000 times smaller than horizontal climate velocity, allowing organisms to maintain constant temperatures by shifting metres in depth rather than kilometres horizontally. Within three key large marine ecosystems, we find more species shifts are explained by vertical than by horizontal climate velocity. Together, our findings have implications for understanding species adaptation to change and for future accessibility of marine resources.

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Fig. 1: Negative VCV indicates deepening isotherms.
Fig. 2: Across global LMEs, the highest HCV and more negative VCV values occurred at lower latitudes.
Fig. 3: HCV and VCV for three key LMEs show heterogeneity associated with regional warming and stratification patterns.
Fig. 4: VCVs are in line with species shifts in depth in three key LMEs.
Fig. 5: Simulated species shifts vary widely under different combinations of VCVs and HCVs.
Fig. 6: During 2019 the majority of fisheries landings occurred where median VCV was between −1 and 0 m yr−1.

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Data availability

All data are publicly available. GLORYS12 version 1 monthly reanalysis is available at https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/product/GLOBAL_MULTIYEAR_PHY_001_030/description. Trawl data from the FishGlob project can be accessed via Github at https://github.com/AquaAuma/FishGlob_data. Fisheries catch data from 2019 are available at http://www.seaaroundus.org/data/#/lme.

Code availability

The Python code used to calculate vertical and horizontal climate velocities and species shifts is available via GitHub at https://github.com/lagruenburg/Vertical_Climate_Velocity (ref. 65).

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Acknowledgements

Support for this work was provided by the New York State Environmental Protection Fund Ocean and Great Lakes Program, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Laura K. Gruenburg, Kamazima Lwiza & Lesley Thorne

  2. Department of Earth Marine and Environmental Sciences, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Morehead City, NC, USA

    Janet Nye

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Contributions

L.T. and J.N. secured funding for the project. All authors designed the climate velocity analysis. L.K.G., L.T. and J.N. designed the species shift analysis. L.K.G. preformed the analyses. All authors prepared the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Laura K. Gruenburg.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Isaac Brito Morales, Yeray Santana-Falcón, and the other, anonymous, reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Vertical and horizontal temperature gradients in each Large Marine Ecosystem (LME).

Half violin and boxplots for vertical temperature gradient (left) and horizontal temperature gradient at the surface (right) within each LME. LME names and associated number are on the leftmost y-axis. LMEs are grouped by their geographic region with tropical LMEs at the top in red followed below by subtropical in yellow, temperate in brown, subarctic in light blue and arctic in dark blue. In both vertical and horizontal temperature gradient plots a dashed vertical line shows 0 Cm−1 (Ckm−1).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Full-depth and surface only temperature trends in each Large Marine Ecosystem (LME).

Half violin and boxplots for temperature trend in the subsurface (left) and surface temperature trend (right) within each LME. LME names and associated number are on the leftmost y-axis. LMEs are grouped by their geographic region with tropical LMEs at the top in red followed below by subtropical in yellow, temperate in brown, subarctic in light blue and arctic in dark blue. In both vertical and horizontal climate velocity plots a dashed vertical line shows 0 °Cyr−1.

Extended Data Fig. 3 In the Gulf of Mexico many species shifted longitudinally toward the east.

Species movements in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico from trawl survey data post 1992. The colors indicate the mean sea surface temperature during the fall (averaged September, October, November). Cooler temperatures are present in the northern part of the Gulf along the US coast, and also in the eastern part of the Gulf along the western Florida coast. Here we show only species whose movement was farther east than the zonal component of horizontal climate velocity would suggest. Black diamonds represent the biomass weighted mean latitude and longitude of a single species at the earliest point it appears in the trawl data post 1992, we call this the ‘starting location’. The grey lines show simplified pathways taken by these species as straight lines connecting all weighted latitude longitude locations each year. The ‘x’, triangle, and circle markers show the last biomass weighted mean location of the species (the most recent year in which that species was present); we term this the ending location. The ‘x’ indicates that there was no significant linear temporal trend in depth for this species. The orange circle indicates the species moved in agreement with vertical climate velocity, the pink ‘down’ triangle indicates movement deeper than vertical climate velocity would suggest, and the green ‘up’ triangle indicates the species moved shallower than vertical climate velocity would suggest. Many of the species started out along the Texas and Louisiana coasts and migrated toward the west Florida coast.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Many species shifted longitudinally, most notably in the Gulf of Mexico.

Climate velocities (boxplots) for the Northeast U.S. (NEUS), Gulf of Mexico (G of Mex), and East Bering Sea (E Bering S) relative to the rate of statistically significant distributional shifts for fish and invertebrate species (points). Center lines within the box plots show median values, box limits show the upper and lower quartile, the upper whisker shows the upper quartile plus 1.5 times the interquartile range, and the lower whisker shows the lower quartile minus 1.5 times the interquartile range. Outliers are omitted from the boxplots. Points occurring within the whiskers of the box plot show movement as expected based on climate velocity, while those occurring above or below the whiskers of the boxplots show movement that is farther east or west than expected based on horizontal climate velocity (HCV). Longitudinal component of HCV relative to east/west movement. The dots are colored to show rates of movement that are farther east, farther west, or in agreement with climate velocity. Axis limits in panel a) are restricted to better show overlap between climate velocity boxplots and species rates of movement. In b) axis limits allow all species to be shown.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Climate velocities and species shifts with outliers shown.

Climate velocities (boxplots) for the Northeast U.S. (NEUS), Gulf of Mexico (G of Mex), and East Bering Sea (E Bering S) relative to the rate of statistically significant distributional shifts for fish and invertebrate species (points), as in Fig. 4. Here axis limits allow outlier species to be shown. Center lines within the box plots show median values, box limits show the upper and lower quartile, the upper whisker shows the upper quartile plus 1.5 times the interquartile range, and the lower whisker shows the lower quartile minus 1.5 times the interquartile range. Outliers are omitted from the boxplots. Points occurring within the whiskers of the box plot show movement as expected based on climate velocity, while those occurring above or below the whiskers of the boxplots show movement that is further north (shallower) or south (deeper), respectively, than expected based on horizontal climate velocity (HCV) or vertical climate velocity (VCV). a) Latitudinal component of HCV relative to north/south movement. The dots are colored to show rates of movement that are farther north, farther south, or in agreement with climate velocity. b) VCV relative to movement in depth. The dots are colored to show rates of vertical movement that indicate deeper than, shallower than, or in agreement with climate velocity. c) VCV relative to movement in depth for species that did not show any significant horizontal (latitudinal or longitudinal) shifts. Colors as in b).

Extended Data Table 1 The resulting sign of climate velocity under all combinations of spatial gradients and temporal trends of temperature
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 All species significant and non-significant shifts in three dimensions
Full size table
Extended Data Table 3 Species that reached a border of the Large Marine Ecosystem during the simulation
Full size table

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Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2.

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Gruenburg, L.K., Nye, J., Lwiza, K. et al. Vertical climate velocity adds a critical dimension to species shifts. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 656–664 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02300-6

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