Extinction risk from climate change
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Climate change over the past ,30 years has produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species1,2 and has been implicated in one species-level extinction3. Using projections of species’ distributions for future climate scenarios, we assess extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction shows a powerlaw relationship with geographical range size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15–37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be ‘committed to extinction’. When the average of the three methods and two dispersal scenarios is taken, minimal climate-warming scenarios produce lower projections of species committed to extinction (,18%) than mid-range (,24%) and maximum change (,35%) scenarios. These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 145-148 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Nature |
Volume | 427 |
Issue number | 6970 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 8 Feb 2004 |
Externally published | Yes |