Extinction risk from climate change

Climate change over the past approximately 30 years has produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species and has been implicated in one species-level extinction. Using projections of species' distributions for future climate scenarios, we assess extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface. Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction shows a power-law relationship with geographical range size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15-37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be 'committed to extinction'. When the average of the three methods and two dispersal scenarios is taken, minimal climate-warming scenarios produce lower projections of species committed to extinction ( approximately 18%) than mid-range ( approximately 24%) and maximum-change ( approximately 35%) scenarios. These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.     

Emperor penguins and climate change

Variations in ocean-atmosphere coupling over time in the Southern Ocean have dominant effects on sea-ice extent and ecosystem structure, but the ultimate consequences of such environmental changes for large marine predators cannot be accurately predicted because of the absence of long-term data series on key demographic parameters. Here, we use the longest time series available on demographic parameters of an Antarctic large predator breeding on fast ice and relying on food resources from the Southern Ocean. We show that over the past 50 years, the population of emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) in Terre Adélie has declined by 50% because of a decrease in adult survival during the late 1970s. At this time there was a prolonged abnormally warm period with reduced sea-ice extent. Mortality rates increased when warm sea-surface temperatures occurred in the foraging area and when annual sea-ice extent was reduced, and were higher for males than for females. In contrast with survival, emperor penguins hatched fewer eggs when winter sea-ice was extended. These results indicate strong and contrasting effects of large-scale oceanographic processes and sea-ice extent on the demography of emperor penguins, and their potential high susceptibility to climate change.     

2022年气候变化与治理热点回眸

回顾了2022年全球气候变化与治理领域取得的系列令人瞩目的成果。介绍了2022年全球温度持续升高、温室气体浓度创新高、海冰范围缩小及海平面上升等气候变化科学共识；“三重”拉尼娜重现、南亚高温洪水、欧洲及中国高温干旱等极端天气气候事件；全球碳减排承诺、多灾种预警系统、IPCC第六次评估报告（AR6）、第27届联合国气候变化大会（COP27）、生物多样性大会（COP15）等全球气候变化治理与认知方面的最新进展。     

Non-CO2 greenhouse gases and climate change

Earth's climate is warming as a result of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO(2)) from fossil fuel combustion. Anthropogenic emissions of non-CO(2) greenhouse gases, such as methane, nitrous oxide and ozone-depleting substances (largely from sources other than fossil fuels), also contribute significantly to warming. Some non-CO(2) greenhouse gases have much shorter lifetimes than CO(2), so reducing their emissions offers an additional opportunity to lessen future climate change. Although it is clear that sustainably reducing the warming influence of greenhouse gases will be possible only with substantial cuts in emissions of CO(2), reducing non-CO(2) greenhouse gas emissions would be a relatively quick way of contributing to this goal.     

Land-atmosphere coupling and climate change in Europe

Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations are expected to enhance the interannual variability of summer climate in Europe and other mid-latitude regions, potentially causing more frequent heatwaves. Climate models consistently predict an increase in the variability of summer temperatures in these areas, but the underlying mechanisms responsible for this increase remain uncertain. Here we explore these mechanisms using regional simulations of recent and future climatic conditions with and without land-atmosphere interactions. Our results indicate that the increase in summer temperature variability predicted in central and eastern Europe is mainly due to feedbacks between the land surface and the atmosphere. Furthermore, they suggest that land-atmosphere interactions increase climate variability in this region because climatic regimes in Europe shift northwards in response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, creating a new transitional climate zone with strong land-atmosphere coupling in central and eastern Europe. These findings emphasize the importance of soil-moisture-temperature feedbacks (in addition to soil-moisture-precipitation feedbacks) in influencing summer climate variability and the potential migration of climate zones with strong land-atmosphere coupling as a consequence of global warming. This highlights the crucial role of land-atmosphere interactions in future climate change.     

Linking climate change to lemming cycles

The population cycles of rodents at northern latitudes have puzzled people for centuries, and their impact is manifest throughout the alpine ecosystem. Climate change is known to be able to drive animal population dynamics between stable and cyclic phases, and has been suggested to cause the recent changes in cyclic dynamics of rodents and their predators. But although predator-rodent interactions are commonly argued to be the cause of the Fennoscandian rodent cycles, the role of the environment in the modulation of such dynamics is often poorly understood in natural systems. Hence, quantitative links between climate-driven processes and rodent dynamics have so far been lacking. Here we show that winter weather and snow conditions, together with density dependence in the net population growth rate, account for the observed population dynamics of the rodent community dominated by lemmings (Lemmus lemmus) in an alpine Norwegian core habitat between 1970 and 1997, and predict the observed absence of rodent peak years after 1994. These local rodent dynamics are coherent with alpine bird dynamics both locally and over all of southern Norway, consistent with the influence of large-scale fluctuations in winter conditions. The relationship between commonly available meteorological data and snow conditions indicates that changes in temperature and humidity, and thus conditions in the subnivean space, seem to markedly affect the dynamics of alpine rodents and their linked groups. The pattern of less regular rodent peaks, and corresponding changes in the overall dynamics of the alpine ecosystem, thus seems likely to prevail over a growing area under projected climate change.     

Effects of climate change on biodiversity

1 Rise of studies on climate change＇s effects on biodiversity
Until the 1980s, climate change and biodiversity were studied as two independent disciplines for more than a century. In 1992, the Ecological Society of America＇s annual report named climate change, biodiversity, and the sustainable ecological system as the three major global environmental issues of the twenty-first century [1].     

Ecological responses to recent climate change

There is now ample evidence of the ecological impacts of recent climate change, from polar terrestrial to tropical marine environments. The responses of both flora and fauna span an array of ecosystems and organizational hierarchies, from the species to the community levels. Despite continued uncertainty as to community and ecosystem trajectories under global change, our review exposes a coherent pattern of ecological change across systems. Although we are only at an early stage in the projected trends of global warming, ecological responses to recent climate change are already clearly visible.     

Biodiversity conservation: climate change and extinction risk

Thomas et al. have carried out a useful analysis of the extinction risk from climate warming. Their overall conclusion, that a large fraction of extant species could be driven to extinction by expected climate trends over the next 50 years, is compelling: it adds to the many other reasons why new energy policies are needed to reduce the pace of warming.     

Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate

The most important anthropogenic influences on climate are the emission of greenhouse gases and changes in land use, such as urbanization and agriculture. But it has been difficult to separate these two influences because both tend to increase the daily mean surface temperature. The impact of urbanization has been estimated by comparing observations in cities with those in surrounding rural areas, but the results differ significantly depending on whether population data or satellite measurements of night light are used to classify urban and rural areas. Here we use the difference between trends in observed surface temperatures in the continental United States and the corresponding trends in a reconstruction of surface temperatures determined from a reanalysis of global weather over the past 50 years, which is insensitive to surface observations, to estimate the impact of land-use changes on surface warming. Our results suggest that half of the observed decrease in diurnal temperature range is due to urban and other land-use changes. Moreover, our estimate of 0.27 degrees C mean surface warming per century due to land-use changes is at least twice as high as previous estimates based on urbanization alone.