[MCN] Heat: "A death zone is creeping over the surface of Earth"

[Lance Olsen]

Excerpt: "From extreme rainfall to rising sea levels, global warming is expected to wreak havoc on human lives. Sometimes, the most straightforward impact — the warming itself — is overlooked. Yet heat kills. The body, after all, has evolved to work in a fairly narrow temperature range. Our sweat-based cooling mechanism is crude; beyond a certain combination of high temperature and humidity, it fails. To be outside and exposed to such an environment for any length of time soon becomes a death sentence.

"And that environment is spreading. A death zone is creeping over the surface of Earth, gaining a little more ground each year. As an analysis published this week in Nature Climate Change shows, since 1980, these temporary hells on Earth have opened up hundreds of times to take life (C. Mora et al. Nature Clim.Change  http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3322 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3322>; 2017)."

​Nature, June 20, 2017. Editorial​: ​Heatwaves to soar above the hot air of climate politics <http://www.nature.com/news/heatwaves-to-soar-above-the-hot-air-of-climate-politics-1.22164>
http://www.nature.com/news/heatwaves-to-soar-above-the-hot-air-of-climate-politics-1.22164 <http://www.nature.com/news/heatwaves-to-soar-above-the-hot-air-of-climate-politics-1.22164>
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2016  - “Climate change impacts have now been documented across every ecosystem on Earth, despite an average warming of only ~1°C so far.”

Scheffers et al. The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people. Science, 11 NOVEMBER 2016

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2011 - "  …  analysis suggests that despite high-level statements to the contrary, there is now little to no chance of maintaining the global mean surface temperature at or below 2C. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2C have been revised upwards, sufficiently so that 2C now more appropriately represents the threshold between ‘dangerous’ and ‘extremely dangerous’ climate change."
 
Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows. Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences (2011)

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2006 - “Climate change is not a new topic in biology...... Observations of range shifts in parallel with climate change ... date back to the mid-1700s.”

“This review  …  deals exclusively with observed responses of wild biological species and systems ….  “

"A surprising result is the high proportion of species responding to recent, relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6 C)." 

Parmesan, Camille. Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change. The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics  37: pp. 637-69. 2006.

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2004 --"Between 1C and 2C increases in global mean temperatures most species, ecosystems and landscapes will be impacted and adaptive capacity will become limited. With the already ongoing high rate of climate change, the decline in biodiversity will therefore accelerate and simultaneously many ecosystem services will become less abundant."

Rik Leemans and Bas Eickhout. Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change. Global Environmental Change 14 (2004) 219–228

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2002 - “Although we are only at an early stage in the projected trends of global warming, ecological responses to recent climate change are already clearly visible.”

Walther et al, “Ecological responses to recent climate change.” Nature, March 28, 2002










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