A new study suggests that the drastic effects of climate change may happen sooner than previously projected.
Chris Field, a professor of Biology and environmental Earth system science, and Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science at the Carnegie Institution cautioned that the rate of change over the next 100 years will be more or less 10 times quicker than any climate change in the past 65 million years.
If this kind of development goes on at its current behavior, it will greatly negatively affect the terrestrial ecosystem around the world and a lot of species will need to make adjustments with their behavior, evolution or geographic to be able to survive.
While changes in our ecosystem are inevitable and expected, how we act in this situation will tremendously impinge on how everything will be at the end on the 21st century.
Stanford Climate scientists Field and Diffenbaugh, conducted the study of scientific literature on facets of climate change that can affect the ecosystems, and explored how latest observations and projections for the next century match up to past events in Earth’s history.
Diffenbaugh said in a press release, “We know from past changes that ecosystems have responded to a few degrees of global temperature change over thousands of years. But the unprecedented trajectory that we're on now is forcing that change to occur over decades. That's orders of magnitude faster, and we're already seeing that some species are challenged by that rate of change."
Some of the mightiest proofs for how the global climate reacts to increased levels of carbon dioxide come from paleoclimate studies. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ballooned to a level comparable today fifty-five million years ago. The Arctic Ocean didn’t have ice during summer, and close land was warm enough to support palm trees and alligators.
“There are two key differences for ecosystems in the coming decades compared with the geologic past. One is the rapid pace of modern climate change. The other is that today there are multiple human stressors that were not present 55 million years ago, such as urbanization and air and water pollution," Diffenbaugh added.
With these kinds of reports surfacing nowadays, it would be best for us if we calculate first the carbon footprint of the things we are going to do, like driving a car, heating the house with coal, oil or gas, or when buying foods and goods. It’s a little sacrifice to achieve great things for mother Earth.
This study was published in the online journal Science.
