Data from: Projecting shifts in thermal habitat for 686 species on the North American continental shelf

Recent shifts in the geographic distribution of marine species have been
linked to shifts in preferred thermal habitats. These shifts in
distribution have already posed challenges for living marine resource
management, and there is a strong need for projections of how species
might be impacted by future changes in ocean temperatures during the 21st
century. We modeled thermal habitat for 686 marine species in the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans using long-term ecological survey data from the North
American continental shelves. These habitat models were coupled to output
from sixteen general circulation models that were run under high (RCP 8.5)
and low (RCP 2.6) future greenhouse gas emission scenarios over the 21st
century to produce 32 possible future outcomes for each species. The
models generally agreed on the magnitude and direction of future shifts
for some species (448 or 429 under RCP 8.5 and RCP 2.6, respectively), but
strongly disagreed for other species (116 or 120 respectively). This
allowed us to identify species with more or less robust predictions.
Future shifts in species distributions were generally poleward and
followed the coastline, but also varied among regions and species. Species
from the U.S. and Canadian west coast including the Gulf of Alaska had the
highest projected magnitude shifts in distribution, and many species
shifted more than 1000 km under the high greenhouse gas emissions
scenario. Following a strong mitigation scenario consistent with the Paris
Agreement would likely produce substantially smaller shifts and less
disruption to marine management efforts. Our projections offer an
important tool for identifying species, fisheries, and management efforts
that are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts.