More fires, droughts and floods predicted

Despite the commitment we have already to global warming, even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases now the researchers predict that Eurasia, eastern China, Canada, Central America, and Amazonia are at risk of forest loss (up to 30% probability for a global warming of less then 2°C and increasing to more than 60% for a warming of more than 3°C), while the far north, Amazonia and many semi-arid regions will become more susceptible to wildfires.

Less freshwater availability, and with it more intense droughts, are likely to occur in West Africa, Central America, southern Europe and the eastern USA. Other regions, particularly areas north of 50°N, tropical Africa and northwest South America, will be at significant risk of excessive runoff as trees are lost, increasing the chances of flooding as temperatures rise.

The researchers also found that if the temperature increase is more than 3°C, land carbon sinks could release their stored carbon, starting a positive feedback loop that would increase atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Marko Scholze, lead author on the paper published in PNAS this week, said: “Most importantly we show the steeply increasing risks, and increasingly large areas affected, associated with higher warming levels. This analysis represents a considerable step forward for discussions about ‘dangerous’ climate change and its avoidance.”

The team from QUEST (Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System, a project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and based at Bristol University), with a colleague from the University of Southampton, quantified the risks of climate-induced changes in key ecosystem processes, using novel methods. They gathered results from more than 50 climate model simulations to calculate these risks and then grouped the results according to varying amounts of global warming: less than 2°C, 2-3°C, and more than 3°C.

For each of the temperature groups they show the probability of shifts in forest cover and the areas which exceed the natural variability in wildfire frequency or freshwater supply for the coming 200 years.

Media Contact

Cherry Lewis alfa

More Information:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk

All latest news from the category: Ecology, The Environment and Conservation

This complex theme deals primarily with interactions between organisms and the environmental factors that impact them, but to a greater extent between individual inanimate environmental factors.

innovations-report offers informative reports and articles on topics such as climate protection, landscape conservation, ecological systems, wildlife and nature parks and ecosystem efficiency and balance.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors