Future Changes to Species' Range along the South American Coast Based on Statistically Downscaled SST Projections

Anthropogenic warming has already altered the ranges of several species. This is expected to persist, and likely intensify, as climate continues to change. Understanding such alterations is important for conservation and resource management efforts. Many marine species occupy environments - such as the near shore or shallow shelf areas – not adequately represented by current GCM spatial resolution. Here we use statistical downscaling to construct future sea surface temperature projections at biologically pertinent scales aiming to generate range change estimates for several fiddler crab species (genus Uca) found along the Brazilian coast. Satellite derived SST is used to downscale output from three CMIP5 models (CNRM-CM5, GISS-E2-R, and NorESM1-M) based on the delta, simple and multiple linear regression methods. SST is the predictand with SST, SSS and alongshore winds as predictors. End of the 21^st century SSTs are generated for experiments forced by RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. The skill of the analyzed downscaling techniques is discussed.