Climate News Network

Entire wild systems at risk from rising global heat Rising global heat raises risks to the creatures and ecosystems that sustain human society. Collapse could be sudden and near-total. By Tim Radford LONDON, 14 April, 2020 – Worldwide, entire ecosystems could collapse as the planetary thermometer soars: rising global heat could see the Earth's average temperature rise by 4°C (right now the world is heading for a rise of more than three degrees). And then one in six of the complex communities of plants and animals in wetlands, grasslands, forests or oceans could drastically alter or fail. That is because at such temperatures more than one in five of the creatures in that network of co-dependencies would in the same decade experience temperatures beyond their normal tolerance levels. Read the full article