Global Biodiversity: What Will Happen If Temperatures Continue to Rise?

A new study recently showed that even if global temperatures start declining after peaking this century due to climate change, the dangers to biodiversity could last for decades after.

As specified in a Phys.org report, researchers at the University College London and the University of Cape Town modeled the probable effects on global biodiversity if temperature rise by more than two degrees Celsius than pre-industrial levels before it begins to decrease again.

The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, seeks to restrict global warming to below two degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Nonetheless, as global greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, many scenarios are now featuring a multiple decades-long "overshoot" of the limit of the Paris Agreement, then factor om the impacts of potential carbon dioxide removal technology to invert hazardous temperature rise by 2100.

Climate Change Causing the Ongoing Biodiversity Crisis

The study, published in Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, specified that climate change, as well as the other human influences, are already resulting in an ongoing biodiversity crisis, with "mass die-offs" in forests and coral reefs, altered species distributions and reproductive occurrences, as well as other ill impacts.

According to Dr. Alex Pigot from UCL Center for Biodiversity & Environmental Research, UCL Biosciences, they have investigated what will take place to global diversity if climate change is "only brought under control" following a momentary overshoot of the agreed target to offer evidence that has long been missing from research on climate change.

The research team discovered that great quantities of animal species would continue unsafe enduing conditions for decades following the peak in global temperature.

Pigot also explained that even if they collectively managed to invert global warming before species become irreversibly lost from ecosystems, the ecological disruption resulting from unsafe temperatures could well continue for additional 50 years or more.

'Overshoot'

The study authors investigated over 30,000 species in areas worldwide. They discovered that for over a quarter of the sites examined, the chance of going back to pre-overshoot "normal" is either uncertain or does not exist.

The study focuses on a single overshoot scenario where carbon dioxide emissions continue to grow until 2040, then reverse their course and fall into negative territory after 2070 after deep carbon cuts and large deployment of CO2 removal technology.

Meaning, for many decades in this century, global temperature rise breaches two degrees Celsius, although it goes back to below this level around 2100,

To reach their findings, the study investigators looked at when and how fast the species in a specific place would get exposed to possibly hazardous temperatures, how long such an exposure would last, the number of species it would affect, and if they would ever get de-exposed, going back to their thermal niche.

Lastly, according to a similar Mirage News report, the researchers said that their study reveals that "should we find ourselves overshooting the two degrees Celsius global warming target," humans could pay dearly in terms of loss of biodiversity, compromising the ecosystem services' provision that everyone depends on for their livelihoods.

Avoiding temperature overshoot needs to be a priority, followed by restricting the duration and magnitude of any overshoot.

Related information about protecting biodiversity is shown on OECD Environment's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Global Warming in Science Times.