Whale genes hint at the future of climate change impacts

Scientists are discovering that climate change is already impacting several whale species, especially in the ways and locations they look for food.
But they want to know more: how much will the climate change whales’ behavior and population? And how long will those changes last?
A new study is hinting at the answers to those questions.
On the Point, we talk to Dr. Jooke Robbins of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown and Dr. Per Palsboll, an adjunct scientist at the Center and also a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. They conducted the study together with a team of 37 researchers from 28 institutions in 15 countries. The study, just published in the journal Global Change Biology, looks at whale genes to get clues about what happened to the population after the last ice age ended, about 18,000 years ago. The authors write that their study, “suggests that the large-scale oceanic changes set in motion by global warming persisted for many thousands of years after temperatures stabilized. It is a warning from the past as to what the current global warming may already have started".