Bridging the gap between general circulation model (GCM) output and biological microenvironments

摘要

Of the various research themes that have assumed prominence in recent years, potentially the most far-reaching has been the impact of climate change upon terrestrial biota. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to the Earth's atmosphere are predictedto perturb future meteorological conditions with global mean surface temperature increasing by c. 0.3°C/decade (Houghton et al. 1992). Economists, politicians and environmentalists are concerned about the consequences of these changes for crop yields,species distributions and disease epidemics.