Warming and cooling slope differences were uncertain in four US trawl samples in 1982-2019

We tested whether annual catch latitude had different sea temperature slopes during warming and cooling. We used fixed strata, area weights and persistent taxa in eastern Bering Sea and Northeast US fall surveys in 1982-1999 and 2000-2019. The four warming-minus-cooling slope differences were +19.51, +5.23, +25.65 and -5.17 km per C. All four corrected bootstrap intervals included zero. All planned sensitivity intervals also included zero. Thus, this test did not establish a common response difference or equal responses. Only 17-19 annual pairs entered each model. Broad surface temperature, selected taxa, survey changes, catchability and residual observation bias limit inference. This annual model does not identify recovery paths, a causal climate effect or pollution effects. The package gives raw source hashes, code, derived evidence, numerical checks and reproduction instructions.

species distributions · warming and cooling · sea surface temperature · observation bias · trawl survey · null result