Isostatic rebound Amundsen Bay: a negative feedback that acts on West Antarctic grounding line retreat

In our series ‘Understanding Sea Level Rise’ we’ve paid ample attention to positive melting feedbacks, mechanisms that accelerate ice melt and ice sheet dynamics as global temperatures keep rising. Now of course there are also negative feedbacks, like local relative … Continue reading

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 41: Arctic bird shrinks due to mismatch with tundra insects

Many Arctic species are shrinking in size. Say what? Yes, shrinking in size – polar bears included. Is this some clever climate adaptation (as the opposite holds true: larger body sizes are an adaptation to a cold climate), or is … Continue reading

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 38: European migratory birds offer early climate warning

Migratory birds may seem to be well equipped to cope with the consequences of climate change, because their trait of seasonal migration is of course already an evolutionary adaptation to temperature fluctuations that characterise the seasons of Earth’s temperate climate … Continue reading

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 30: Heavy breathing tropical forests under record heat

Today the WMO announced that the atmospheric CO2 concentration last year rose at a record high speed: +3.3 ppm – jumping from 400.0 ppm in 2015 to 403.3 in 2016. The annual average rise is close to 2 ppm. A … Continue reading

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 18: Widespread effects ‘biodiversity redistribution’ unaccounted

We can all imagine that climate change-driven migration of species will have global consequences. But what do the actual effects look like – and how do these feed back on ecology, climate and human societies?

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 15: On 65% Earth surface biodiversity is beyond safe limit

Again, the use of a geographical approach (and here defining biodiversity as ‘biotic intactness’) shows the Holocene-Anthropocene Mass Extinction is progressing faster then generally thought – and ‘biodiversity safe limits’, however arbitrarily defined, have already been passed on most of … Continue reading

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 11: New climate-biodiversity models better; now need more data

Predictive models that can forecast biodiversity decline under anthropogenic climate change used to be too simplistic, as these ignored crucial biological mechanisms such as demography, dispersal, evolution, and species interactions (for instance species competition and ecosystem dependence). Fortunately these climate-biodiversity … Continue reading

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 10: Biodiversity loss accelerates under warming, metastudy shows

Climate change leads to species extinctions and exponentially so: the loss of biodiversity is set to accelerate under continuation of global average temperature rise.

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 9: Cascading extinctions speed up biodiversity loss – and warming

Yes, we found yet another publication that is critical of one-dimensional biodiversity loss projections of climate change – and again it is a component of interspecies interaction that may be underestimated. We’ve previously looked at species competition and at evolutionary … Continue reading

Understanding Sea Level Rise, p4: ice sheet dynamics and (13) melting feedbacks – a background to 21st century SLR acceleration

In 2016 two influential new publications raised the possibility of a rapid acceleration of sea level rise in the 21st century – to ±2 metres (DeConto & Pollard) or more (2-5m, Hansen et al). In this background article we take … Continue reading