Image by: Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay
A report in nature ecology & evolution has found that the pace of climate change is likely to far outstrip the ability of many species to adapt whether physiologically (biological evolution just doesn’t go very fast) or geographically through migration within ideal climate bands as they shift.
This is called the problem of thermal thresholds and while species impact will be less than 15% up to 1.5 degrees of change, a further one degree of heating would probably double the impact to 30% of all species. This could have catastrophic knock-on effects for food webs and ultimately jeopardize the human food supply.
The study used data from over 36000 species and related impacts from climate data from the mid-19th century thus giving significant weight to their projections for 2100.
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