Hotting Up: Just 2 Degree Temperature Rise Threatens Habitat of 50% of Plants and Animals

A slightly unplanned post today, about a landmark new paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change. It is a huge study that states that more than half of common plants and a third of animals will see a significant reduction in their habitat range if the temperature rises by just 2 degrees.

It's not just polar bears we need to worry about

The team of researchers comes from institutions around the globe, and together studied over 50,000 plant and animal species. Of those studied, more than 57% of plant species and 34% of animals were predicted to lose over half their habitat. Climate change was assessed not just as temperature change but also change in rainfall patterns, and it was predicted that by 2100 the temperature will have risen 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Lead author Dr Rachel Warren says: "Climate change will greatly reduce the diversity of even very common species found in most parts of the world. These effects, however, are not just relevant to environmentalists and zoologists, but to everyone. The knock-on effects for humans of losing so many plants and animals are significant too."

Referring to what is known in ecology as 'ecosystem services', such as water purification, pollination etc., she continued: "Some ecologists don't like the term, because they don't want people's actions to motivated purely by reasons concerning humans, seeing these as selfish, but as far as I am concerned the most important thing right now is that people do act. We can worry about their motivations later. "