 |
| Titel |
Critical impacts of global warming on land ecosystems |
| VerfasserIn |
S. Ostberg, W. Lucht, S. Schaphoff, D. Gerten |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
|
| Sprache |
Englisch
|
| ISSN |
2190-4979
|
| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Earth System Dynamics ; 4, no. 2 ; Nr. 4, no. 2 (2013-10-08), S.347-357 |
| Datensatznummer |
250084956
|
| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/esd-4-347-2013.pdf |
|
|
|
|
|
| Zusammenfassung |
Globally increasing temperatures are likely to have impacts on terrestrial,
aquatic and marine ecosystems that are difficult to manage. Quantifying
impacts worldwide and systematically as a function of global warming is
fundamental to substantiating the discussion on climate mitigation targets
and adaptation planning. Here we present a macro-scale analysis of climate
change impacts on terrestrial ecosystems based on newly developed sets of
climate scenarios featuring a step-wise sampling of global mean temperature
increase between 1.5 and 5 K by 2100. These are processed by a
biogeochemical model (LPJmL) to derive an aggregated metric of simultaneous
biogeochemical and structural shifts in land surface properties which we
interpret as a proxy for the risk of shifts and possibly disruptions in
ecosystems.
Our results show a substantial risk of climate change to transform
terrestrial ecosystems profoundly. Nearly no area of the world is free from
such risk, unless strong mitigation limits global warming to around 2 degrees
above preindustrial level. Even then, our simulations for most climate models
agree that up to one-fifth of the land surface may experience at least
moderate ecosystem change, primarily at high latitudes and high altitudes. If
countries fulfil their current emissions reduction pledges, resulting in
roughly 3.5 K of warming, this area expands to cover half the land surface,
including the majority of tropical forests and savannas and the boreal zone.
Due to differences in regional patterns of climate change, the area
potentially at risk of major ecosystem change considering all climate models
is up to 2.5 times as large as for a single model. |
| |
|
| Teil von |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|