Tag Archives: tropics

Climate & Agriculture 5: Risk of declining (tropical) crop yields has been known for over 25 years

Not just from theoretical thinking, but as calculated outcomes of pioneering climate-crop prediction models – with studies from the early nineties already offering broad patterns of expected changes in agricultural productivity in a warming world. These patterns have of course … Continue reading →

Climate & Agriculture 2: African net agricultural productivity to decline for 5 major food staples

The impact of 21st century climate change on African agriculture deserves special attention, considering rapid population growth and the fact that the continent is currently already a net importer of agricultural products, while several sub-Saharan countries still depend for a … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 47: Can species adapt by changing their fitness curves?

As we discussed in our previous article, ecologists use the term ‘fitness curve’ – or the synonymous ‘performance curve’ – to describe a climatological bandwidth within which a species can survive, including an optimum value and a critical minimum and … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 46: Tropical insects vulnerable due to narrow fitness curve

You would think tropical species like warm weather – and what’s the difference between warm and 2 or 3 degrees warmer. Well, they can be picky. A short appendix to our previous article – a bit of supporting theory as … 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 27: Africa is warming fast, but what about Congo Basin?

21st century climate change affects the entire globe: every ecosystem, every mountain range, all the glaciers, all the land, the oceans. But of all continents it’s often said that Africa will face the biggest impacts. African climate change is far … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 16: Land use & warming exert same stress on tropical biodiversity

Anthropogenic climate change and land use change in the form of agricultural expansion (‘habitat conversion’ – a sweet description for deforestation) act as synergistic drivers of biodiversity loss – in a Costa Rican environmental experiment – literally drying out the … Continue reading →

Today’s paradox: tropical ectotherms don’t like warming

Ecological damage of climate change is expected to be highest where the changes are most profound. That is, due to albedo feedbacks, at very high latitudes and at very high altitudes. So species loss is expected to be highest in … Continue reading →