The Gary Null Blog

PASADENA - By 2100, global climate change will modify plant communities covering almost half of Earth's land surface.

Climate change will also drive the conversion of nearly 40% of land-based ecosystems from one major ecological community type - such as forest, grassland or tundra - toward another, according to a new NASA and university computer modelling study.

"For more than 25 years, scientists have warned of the dangers of human-induced climate change," said Jon Bergengren, a scientist who led the study while a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology in the U.S..

"Our study introduces a new view of climate change, exploring the ecological implications of a few degrees of global warming. While warnings of melting glaciers, rising sea levels and other environmental changes are illustrative and important, ultimately, it's the ecological consequences that matter most."

Climate change causes relocations

Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology investigated how Earth's plant life is likely to react over the next three centuries as Earth's climate changes in response to rising levels of human-produced greenhouse gases. Study results are published in the current issue of the journal Climatic Change.