Climate Change isn't Just in the Arctic: Major Biodiversity Impacts are Global

As our climate shifts and changes, ice sheets are shrinking and ice caps are melting. But the warming world doesn't just impact ice; it also has unprecedented impacts on biodiversity. Scientists have now shown the consequences that climate change has on biodiversity not just in the north, but also in other regions of the world.

"Polar regions have gained substantial attention because they are experiencing a very high temperature increase. Polar climates will shrink in area, providing reduced habitat for arctic and subarctic species, but climate change is more than melting ice," said Miguel Araujo, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Warming in the tropics will create entirely novel climatic conditions, currently not experienced by species anywhere else on Earth. Whether species will be able to adapt to these novel climates is an open question. There is a risk of neglecting such vital information because the temperature increase in the polar regions is easier to grasp in comparison."

In order to find out how other locations might be impacted, the researchers used 15 climate change models used by the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). With these models, the scientists examined how different aspects of change in temperature and precipitation could affect species around the world.

"Climate change can be measured in many more ways than is traditionally done in studies of climate change impacts on biodiversity," said Raquel Garcia, one of the researchers, in a news release. "For example, we can measure whether extreme events will become more or less extreme, whether given climatic conditions will become more or less available, and how far climatic conditions will move from their current locations."

So what did the researchers find? Scientists discovered that climate change may be far more severe for species than first thought. While the results are complicated and the effects of climate change are difficult to predict, it's clear that we're dealing with a startling level of change.

"The actual effects of climate change on biodiversity are extreme difficult to predict," said Araujo in a news release. "To put it plainly, the level of complexity we have to deal with when trying to predict the future effects of climate changes on species an ecosystems is unprecedented in natural sciences, and this is why we have to work with simplifications that uncover the major trends of change that are happening in the natural world."

The findings are published in the journal Science.