Remember this story bandied all over the press from 2008?
Well, not so fast.
In the IPCC Working Group 2 of the IPCC’s AR4, the “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” section here, the idea that plants shift to higher elevations in a warming world is cited in many places. For example:
There’s an IPCC table of such effects:
This new study directly contradicts at least some of the IPCC’s forecasts on the impact of global warming causing elevation shifts of flora.
From the University of California – Davis
UC Davis study shows plants moved downhill, not up, in warming world
Increased precipitation is the key, authors say
In a paper published today in the journal Science, a University of California, Davis, researcher and his co-authors challenge a widely held assumption that plants will move uphill in response to warmer temperatures.
Between 1930 and 2000, instead of colonizing higher elevations to maintain a constant temperature, many California plant species instead moved downhill an average of 260 feet, said Jonathan Greenberg, an assistant project scientist at the UC Davis Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing.
“While the climate warmed significantly in this period, there was also more precipitation. These wetter conditions are allowing plants to exist in warmer locations than they were previously capable of,” Greenberg said.
Many forecasts say climate change will cause a number of plants and animals to migrate to new ranges or become extinct. That research has largely been based on the assumption that temperature is the dominant driver of species distributions. However, Greenberg said the new study reveals that other factors, such as precipitation, may be more important than temperature in defining the habitable range of these species.
The findings could have global relevance, because many locations north of 45 degrees latitude (which includes the northernmost United States, virtually all of Canada and Russia, and most of Europe) have had increased precipitation in the past century, and global climate models generally predict that trend will continue, the authors said.
“As we continue to improve our understanding of climate-change impacts on species, we will help land managers and policy makers to make more informed decisions on, for instance, conservation efforts for threatened and endangered species,” Greenberg said.
He added that the study underlines the importance of an investment in basic science, as the results are based on historical data collected by the U.S. Forest Service in the 1930s, a program that was supported by New Deal spending after the Great Depression.
The study is titled “Changes in climatic water balance drive downhill shifts in plant species’ optimum elevations.” Greenberg’s co-authors are: graduate student Shawn Crimmins (the lead author); assistant professor Solomon Dobrowski (a UC Davis alumnus) and research analyst Alison Mynsberge, all of the University of Montana; and assistant professor John Abatzoglou of the University of Idaho.
Funding was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service.
More information:
UC Davis Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing:
http://www.cstars.ucdavis.edu/
h/t to Chris Horner
Dang, they figured out that plants have seeds….
…is there no limit to their intelligence
Now if they would just figure out that plants evolved to do better with elevated CO2 levels……….
and, last time I checked, no plants = no us
Watts goes up must come down?
This shows that where a plant species grows best is multi-factored. Temperature may push up, but more precipitation may push down for species that like water. There may be other factors as well depending on specific plant species. How much sunlight (think changes in cloud cover.) How much CO2 (some species may treat increases CO2 like more the above studies species treat precipitation and hence do better and move down.)
There may also be indirect impacts depending on other species and how they react (including non plant species.)
Oh well, up is down… Whatever. Look, stop focusing on the details. Get out there and buy some carbon credits already!
Day of the Triffids. It’s worse than we thought.
This makes a lot of sense since few plants are effected by a “sunburn” while many thrive given enough moisture. Then only conter-acting effect will be plants with a greater capacity to use the moisture and over-canopy the plants already there.
Funny how the evidence magically supports whatever the latest theory is. Plants move uphill! Look at this table of plants moving uphill! Now, plants move downhill! How long until they forget about the above table and find some examples of this?
Just like the snowfall theories…
The whole thing was ridiculous from the beginning. Fractions of a degree Centigrade in the average temperature won’t have any effect on plants whatever and it takes years of significantly above or below max/min temperatures to shift a population. Naturally occurring genetic variability has more effect than this ridiculous theory.
So, assuming good moisture levels, i.e. increased precipitation, plants prefer a warmer environment? I know I do.
cheers,
gary
Oh come on! Don’t you know that Global Warming caused plants to move down hill, and move uphill and to stay still, all at the same time.
Anthropogenic Climate Disruption also does that, as does Climate Challenges (whatever they are).
That’s Climate Science!
I suggested here that UK national newspapers give you a column if they want readers.
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/2011/01/the-anti-british-film-industry-south-east-cabal-kills-off-the-studio-which-made-the-excellent-forthcoming-ironclad-with-paul-giamatti-brian-cox-derek-jacobi-kate-mara-james-purefoycharles-d/
The IPCC report might have been right about plants seeking comparable temperature ranges. Maybe the plants didn’t get the memo that it was actually warmer and that is why they moved to slightly lower elevations to find actual comparable temperatures. No matter how you look at it, it obviously isn’t something worth worrying about let alone even taking notice of.
You simply wouldn’t believe some of the things that scientists are discovering; or maybe postulating anyway.
Take AGM for example; Anthropogenic Global Movement. How often have we been told that our ancestors came out of Africa. So Pildown man didn’t just evolve somewhere in England by himself.
So we finally accepted that maybe our ancestors did come out of Africa.
Well you simply won’t believe what they are now suggesting.
On page 20 of the 7-Jan 2011 SCIENCE, in a NEWSFOCUS article some scientists have made a momentous suggestion. They are now suggesting that in their trek out of the African Continent; those ancient nomad ancestors of ours actually came from North Africa. Who would have imagined that ? I guess their first thoughts were that they came from East Africa; well like Obama’s father did you see.
So how does this work; our previous ancestors from Kenya or maybe Tanganyika, hopped a cruise ship, and set off for India; but somehow that idea doesn’t seem to fit. so now they want us to believe that these guys set off for the suez canal, and then crossed there into the Sinai, and off to Israel; perhaps through the gaza strip.
Well I just never would have imagined people going north to get out of Africa; just is so unseemly ! Well of course the Sahara desert was like Minnesota, a land of ten thousand lakes back in those days; and who wouldn’t want to go there on the way to the middle East with all that oil. So this was only 130,000 years ago, and you can see what a mess those trekkers made of that pristine region in north Africa; turned the whole place into a desert.
Well that is science for you; just when you thought you understood something; they tell you maybe it wasn’t so.
So where does this leave us with the story of the Snows of Kilimanjaro? Is it just clearing of forests or is it plants not growing as well at higher altitudes eg because of less precipitation? Anyone out there got any ideas?
A typical ivory-tower science?
Uphill, downhill, who cares? The thing is the plants are moving and it is all human’s fault. Be afraid be very afraid it is the revenge of the plants. Have you ever tried to out run a plant?
Did the IPCC get anything right?
As a skeptic i would still say that this study is as much bull as the others.
If they move uphill or downhill would very much depend on the already existing climate/latitude of the said place.
In a country where you have cold and wet climate they would move upwards while opposite would be the case i guess in places that were already hot and dry.
The treeline in scandinavia for example was actually much higher during early parts of holocene when climate was warmer than present time. Now we have mostly just tundra at altitudes were we had trees some thousand years ago.
Come on now your not being fair here, how can you expect the IPCC to compete with such basic science? I mean where’s the super computer, the modelling, the fancy conferences in far away places and the political activists? Of course the clincher that tells us all it can’t be right, there’s no hockey stick graph telling us we are all doomed…doomed…
Water is life. It is soul. Literally.
electricity is spirit. It is Will.
the two combined are LIFE.
sea water and blood are almost the same
The next thing we’ll hear is that one of these studies has found that the botanists are right that tree rings are also affected by other factors than just air temperature.
That might cause a decline that is hard to hide.
quote” The findings could have global relevance, because many locations north of 45 degrees latitude (which includes the northernmost United States, virtually all of Canada and Russia, and most of Europe) have had increased precipitation in the past century, and global climate models generally predict that trend will continue, the authors said.” unquote.
I thought that the global climate models were predicting drought?
One of my little projects has been to use Bayesian analysis to produce my own email spam filter by detecting telltale key works.
If I did the same for AGW hysteria articles one of my first keywords would be “OVERWHELMING”.
As a general comment about plants and animals, anyone who has a pet or plants, will know that water is the most important thing as indeed it is for humans, not temperature. Higher temperatures mean we need to use more water to survive.
I sometimes wonder if all this AGW science is done by people with no commonsense or at least, no experience of life, pet animals, no gardens, and don’t live near the sea.
Did the IPCC get anything right?
Yes, they got the most important part of the conference right – the date of the next conference.