Effects of climate change on global biodiversity: a review of key literature.

摘要

There is very little doubt among the scientific community that human-induced greenhouse gas emission has contributed significantly to the climate change. Most significant changes in the earth's temperature have been noticed since the advent of the industrial era in the late 1800s. Over the past 100 years, the earth's surface has warmed by approximately 0.6 degrees C. Human activities such as the large-scale burning of fossil fuels to operate power plants and automobiles are releasing greenhouse gases like CO₂ into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. Humans are currently releasing 70 million tonnes of CO₂ per day into the atmosphere. This paper draws from the major papers that have appeared in journals on this topic over the past two decades, and gives an overview of anthropogenic climate change and its impact on a wide variety of life-forms in various ecosystems. After a brief overview of climate change and its causes, focus is given to amphibian extinctions in Central America, the poleward and altitudinal shifts in the distribution of various organisms (especially butterflies), the spread of pathogen-driven diseases, the bleaching of coral reefs, and the changes in community and trophic dynamics in various marine and terrestrial ecosystems.