There’s a new paper in Science today by Arcturo Schmitnick of the Innsbruck Institute for Advance Studies suggestiing global warming may have a larger effect than previously understood on the world’s population of Gnomes. Schmitnick used a coupled GCM/Forest-Elf simulation to try to determine the geographical distribution of climate change patterns against what elfologists know about current Gnome populations:

In the simulations, a disruption of the Atlantic hypertroidal circulation leads to a collapse of the Northern European Gnome stocks to less than half of their initial biomass, owing to rapid loss of nutrient reservoirs. Globally integrated export production declines by more than 20 per cent owing to reduced upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water in northern lakes and embayments and gradual depletion of upper water nutrient concentrations. These model results are consistent with the available high-resolution palaeorecord, and suggest that global Gnome populations are sensitive to changes in the Atlantic hypertroidal circulation. Globally integrated Gnome production declines by more than 20 per cent owing to reduced upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water and gradual depletion of upper ocean nutrient concentrations. These model results are consistent with the available high-resolution palaeorecord, and suggest that global Gnome productivity is sensitive to changes in the Atlantic hypertroidal circulation.

This could be good news for KDE, at least with respect to the Gnomes who depend on fisheries for their liveliihood, though it’s less clear what will happen in the continental interiors, where Gnome forest patch agriculture dominates.