Global climate change affects productivity and species composition of freshwater and marine aquatic ecosystems by raising temperatures, ocean acidification, excessive solar UV and visible radiation. Effects on bacterioplankton and viruses, phytoplankton and macroalgae have farreaching consequences for primary consumers such as zooplankton, invertebrates and vertebrates, as well as on human consumption of fish, crustaceans and mollusks. It has affected the habitation of the Arctic and Antarctic oceans the most so far. Increasing pollution from terrestrial runoff, industrial, municipal and household wastes as well as marine transportation and plastic debris also affect aquatic ecosystems.

Donat-P. Häder was the director of the Botanical Institute at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, and held the chair in Ecophysiology. He was also the director of the Botanical Garden of this university. He obtained his Ph.D. from Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, in 1973 where he continued as a Research Assistant until 1988. During this time he had several appointments as a travelling researcher in the US and Japan. His research interests include the effects of solar UV and global climate change on aquatic ecosystems. In addition, he worked on space biology and graviperception mechanisms in microorganisms using satellites, sounding rockets, the American Shuttle and the ISS. He is a member of the Effects Panel of the United Nations Environmental Programme since 1987 and was a member of the advisory board on Ecological Research of the German Minister for Research and Technology. He is a member of numerous Editorial Boards of internationally renowned journals and Vice President of the Deutsche Akademie für Photobiologie und Phototechnologie. He has published more than 720 scientific papers and worked on close to 30 books.

Kunshan Gao is currently the Chair Professor of State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, China. He obtained his Ph.D. from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1989 and continued research at The General Technical Research Institute of Kansai Electrical Co., and a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Hawaii, USA. He became an Associate Professor at Shantou University in 1995 and was recognized as the outstanding young scientist in 1996 by NSFC, then as professor for one hundred talented programs in the Institute of Hydrobiology by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1997. Professor Gao's scientific interests focus on the environmental impacts of increasing atmospheric CO2 (ocean acidification) and solar UV radiation. He has more than 260 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications and Global Change Biology. He has been active as a member of SCOR WG on Changing Ocean Biological Systems.