Uruguay's clam die-off is a vivid sign of global warming's ripple effects
Clams, with their hard shells, are tough creatures. And the fact they are dying off in droves as waters warm off the coast of Uruguay is one of the most vivid displays of the impacts of climate change.
Over the past century, a mysterious blob of warm water extending from the Uruguayan coast far into the South Atlantic has heated extremely rapidly — by more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as The Post's Chris Mooney and John Muyskens write in a must-read report.
The blob, warming at double the global average, is having serious impacts for Uruguay, a tiny South American country of fewer than 4 million people whose economy depends on the ocean to draw in tourists. The hot zone has "driven mass die-offs of clams, dangerous ocean heat waves and algal blooms, and wide-ranging shifts in Uruguay’s fish catch," Mooney and Muyskens write in the latest installment of The Post’s series on places that have warmed more than 2 degrees over preindustrial levels across the globe.
The “2C” regions include many already hot places, such as the Middle East, as well as large swaths of frigid Siberia and Canada.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/09/11/the-energy-202-uruguay-s-clam-die-off-is-a-vivid-sign-of-global-warming-s-ripple-effects/5d77f65588e0fa7bb93a8a72/
