. DATA GAPS: MORE COMMITMENT FOR TIME
SERIES
A major limitation of global analyses is that research
effort is extremely patchy in space. Analysis of the
assembled database revealed that, as with terrestrial
systems, our knowledge of climate impacts was dominated
by a few well-studied regions (figure 1). In
particular, temperate regions of the North Atlantic
and North Pacific are relatively well covered by time
series, especially the North Sea. There are few longterm
observations in the vast waters of the tropics
and subtropics, around developing nations, and those
in the Southern Hemisphere, and in particular in the
Indian and Southern Oceans. With respect to different
habitats in our database, we anticipated capturing most
observations from the best studied and understood
taxa. By far, the most studied group in terms of time
series in the world is fish. This group accounted for 41
per cent of our observations in the database, but there
are undoubtedly many more fisheries time series that
have not been analysed in a climate change context.
Workshop participants were also surprised to find that
there were not more observations of coral reefs that
passed our database criteria, such as long-term combined
observations of biological and climate variables.
This is despite the strong attribution link to temperature
based on solid mechanistic understanding of the
role that warming plays in coral bleaching events,
the success of satellite prediction programmes based
on temperature and the palaeontological evidence.