Basking on sun-warmed beaches helps the threatened turtles regulate their body temperatures and may aid their immune systems and digestion.
By analyzing six years of turtle surveys and 24 years of satellite data, researchers from Duke University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and the University of Ioannina in Greece have found the turtles bask more often each year when sea surface temperatures drop.
If global warming trends continue, this behavior may cease globally by 2102, the study projects. In Hawaii, where the study was primarily focused, green turtles might stop basking much earlier, by 2039.
The scientists published their peer-reviewed findings last week in the journal Biology Letters.