Global warming will cause shifts in regional climates and ecosystems

Nature : The rate of change in Earth’s climate zones will increase with rising global temperature, according to a study published online this week in Nature. Irina Mahlstein of the University of Colorado Boulder and colleagues are the first to analyze the pace of climate change in reference to Earth’s various climate zones. The researchers used global mean temperature and precipitation data to run several different climate-modeling scenarios. In one model, the pace of shifting climate zones nearly doubled by the end of the century and affected 20% of all land area. If that were to occur, Earth would become progressively warmer and drier. As a result, plant and animal species would have increasingly less time to adapt to the changes and might risk extinction.