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1163. Climate Change Accelerates Species Extinction

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1163. Climate Change Accelerates Species Extinction

 

Climate change is changing the diversity of species around the world, as well as their interactions and ecosystems. Evidence suggests that some species survive through adaptation to a changing climate, while others face population decline and the possibility of extinction.

The loss and restructuring of biodiversity threatens not only ecosystems, but also the many contributions that biodiversity makes to people. Accurate forecasting under different greenhouse gas emission scenarios is needed to enable effective and efficient conservation activities to protect biodiversity. Such projections can also identify species, ecosystems, and regions that face the greatest risk.

The paper, published in Science, provides a comprehensive assessment of the risk of global extinction due to climate change. Extinction risk is defined as a probabilistic estimate that a species will become extinct in the future without mitigation measures. The paper synthesizes more than 5 million projections from 485 peer-reviewed studies to provide a global quantitative assessment of species extinctions due to climate change.

The analysis suggests that extinctions will accelerate rapidly when global warming exceeds 1.5°C, and that in the highest emissions scenario, about one-third of the world's species will be threatened. Amphibians, species living in mountain, island, and freshwater ecosystems, as well as those found in South America, Australia, and New Zealand, face the greatest threat. The paper argues that it is important not only to limit greenhouse gases, but also to identify which species should be prioritized for protection in order to conserve biodiversity until human-caused climate change is halted and reversed.

 

Reference
Mark C. Urban, Climate change extinctions, Science (2024).
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4461
 

 


 

 

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