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Increasing impacts of climate change upon ecosystems with increasing global mean temperature rise

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Abstract

In a meta-analysis we integrate peer-reviewed studies that provide quantified estimates of future projected ecosystem changes related to quantified projected local or global climate changes. In an advance on previous analyses, we reference all studies to a common pre-industrial base-line for temperature, employing up-scaling techniques where necessary, detailing how impacts have been projected on every continent, in the oceans, and for the globe, for a wide range of ecosystem types and taxa. Dramatic and substantive projected increases of climate change impacts upon ecosystems are revealed with increasing annual global mean temperature rise above the pre-industrial mean (ΔTg). Substantial negative impacts are commonly projected as ΔTg reaches and exceeds 2°C, especially in biodiversity hotspots. Compliance with the ultimate objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Article 2) requires that greenhouse gas concentrations be stabilized within a time frame “sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change”. Unless ΔTg is constrained to below 2°C at most, results here imply that it will be difficult to achieve compliance. This underscores the need to limit greenhouse gas emissions by accelerating mitigation efforts and by protecting existing ecosystems from greenhouse-gas producing land use change processes such as deforestation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Rachel Warren & Santiago de la Nava Santos

  2. WorldWildlife Fund U.S., 1250 24th St. NW, Washington, DC, 20037, USA

    Jeff Price

  3. Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, California State University, Chico, CA, USA

    Jeff Price

  4. Systems Ecology, Institute of Integrative Biology: Ecology, Evolution, and Disease, Department of Environmental Sciences, ETH Zurich, Universitätstr. 16/CHN E21.1, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Andreas Fischlin

  5. Global Change and Biodiversity Program, South African National Biodiversity Institute, P/Bag X7, Claremont, 7735, Cape Town, South Africa

    Guy Midgley

Authors
  1. Rachel Warren
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  2. Jeff Price
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  3. Andreas Fischlin
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  4. Santiago de la Nava Santos
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  5. Guy Midgley
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rachel Warren.

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Warren, R., Price, J., Fischlin, A. et al. Increasing impacts of climate change upon ecosystems with increasing global mean temperature rise. Climatic Change 106, 141–177 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-9923-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-9923-5

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