Water temperatures in the Chesapeake Bay are rising by 1.2 degrees per decade, with some “hot spots” such as Baltimore warming more rapidly than that, says the Baltimore Sun in summarizing a University of Maryland study. “If unchecked, scientists say, the trend could complicate costly, long-running efforts to restore the ailing estuary, worsen fish-suffocating dead zones and alter the food web on which the bay’s fish and crabs depend.” The Sun said water temperatures are higher in more than 92 percent of the Bay and its rivers than in the 1980s.
States in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are under an EPA “pollution diet” to reduce nutrient and sediment runoff as a way to improve water quality in the Bay and build marine life. Lora Harris, a U-Maryland ecologist, said warmer water could challenge the recovery plan. Water holds less dissolved oxygen when it warms, Harris told the Sun, and could change the types of plant and marine life in the Bay.