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
In the temperate regions of Australia, when its hot, its fine and the rainfall is low and plants and anmals generally retreat to the locations where thay can survive.
When its rainy its cool. The average temperatures do not vary much from year to year but the rainfall sure increases substantially. On the one hand, plants and animals can then spread out to live at least temporarily in what would have been quite unhosptial regions (until these dry up too much again).
In the short run, when its is raining like at present, many animals and plants are drowned. The area has to be repopulated later from the dryer areas.
The is a cycle in the weather and in life here in Australia.
From: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2000-11/974689192.Ge.r.html
“In terms of size for example, the human genome contains about 3-4
billion base pairs of DNA, whereas corn or maize, is perhaps a less
complex organism contains a similar number of base pairs. Some pine trees
and lilly plants contain 10-100 times as much DNA as a human, most of
which does not appear to encode any genes.”
===========
All the better to survive the continual climate/environmental changes they have been subjected to, for millions of years.
CO2 Science has been on this for years.
Higher CO2 enables all plants to manage with LESS precipitation, thus colonizing more arid areas DOWNHILL or uphill, as higher CO2 enables nearly all plants to improve their flexibility to thrive in variant ecosystems. Lastly, as noted above, a few tenths of a degree centigrade is not likely to make the slightest difference anyway, since the same species managed through the last ice age (a few degrees centigrade) and because the variation is only at the margins, affecting average temperature, not median temperature distributions.
Are they sure it was rainfall? Did they measure the temperature change at each location?
We can argue details all we like. The fact of the matter is that they are well organized, (centred around the IPCC), whilst we are a bunch of well meaning, strong headed rabble, (centred around exceptional blogs like this one and others).
We need to be better organized, else papers like this one will disappear into the noise.
When the AR5 comes out, we’ll be complaining that papers like this one didn’t receive due consideration and the whole circular game will be perpetuated.
In the meantime, policy makers are introducing new measures at a steady pace.
Even if a ‘smoking gun’ was to be exposed at some stage in the future, the new measures will be nigh on impossible to unwind.
I have been researching similar claims in the Sierra Nevada. Camille Parmesan published about the Edith Checkerspot moving northward and upwards. In California’s Sierra Nevada logging moved upslope after the 1950’s and this created openings and new additional habitat adjacent to the butterflies natural habitat on rocky outcrop. These new resources provided new source populations that buffered the species when some populations were lost during bad weather years. On the coast and at lower elevations the butterflies experienced a loss of habitat that removed many of these source populations thus making them more susceptible to extinctions She claimed however that it was global warming causing low elevation extinctions while improving higher elevation habitat. And the AGW crowd loved the story.
Using some of the same data from the Sierra Nevada she co-authored a paper with Easterling and Thomas Karl titled “Climate Extremes: Observations,
Modeling, and Impacts”. The butterfly extinctions that had been observed during a long term study and were all attributed to cold events, but blamed on AGW caused extreme weather. But the really weird part was the extinctions only happened to the populations in the newly created logged areas. There the butterflies had switched to feeding on a annual plant that was susceptible to bad weather. The natural populations still fed on a perennial plant in the rocky outcrops and those populations thrived during the very same cold events. Although the two populations were within a mere 50 meters apart, and experienced the same identical climate, the population extinctions in the logged area were then heralded as evidence of climate change disruption. Amazing such a claim led her to be one of the few IPCC biologists.
The research she based these claims on was done by her soon to be husband and titled “EVOLUTIONARY RESPONSES OF A BUTTERFLY METAPOPULATION TO HUMAN- AND CLIMATE-CAUSED ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATION” if anyone is interested.
Good to see this counter study to the naive, simplistic idea that temperature will cause plants to migrate higher. Of course this later study is itself focuses on just a small set of parameters. Hopefully folks will soon clue in that we have very lkittle idea what is going on. Good to keep studying the issues, but let’s hold the pronouncements for a while.
For chris1958 who asks about Kilamanjaro:
The Snows of Kilamanjaro have been definitely linked to changes in moisture that both reduced the resupply of snow but increased short wave radiation.
Start here with a 2004 paper titled “MODERN GLACIER RETREAT ON KILIMANJARO AS EVIDENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE: OBSERVATIONS AND FACTS”
http://www.uibk.ac.at/geographie/tropical-glaciology/literatur/kaser_et_al_ijc24(2004).pdf
Here is an excerpt.
“Today, as in the past, Kilimanjaro’s glaciers are markedly characterized by features such as penitentes, cliffs, and sharp edges, all resulting from strong differential ablation. These features illustrate the absolute predominance of incoming shortwave radiation and turbulent latent heat flux in providing the energy for ablation (Kraus, 1972). A considerably positive heat flux from either longwave radiation or sensible heat flux, if available, would round-off and destroy the observed features within a very short time, ranging from hours to days. On the other hand, if destroyed, the features could only be sculptured again under very particular circumstances and over a long time. Thus, the existence of these features indicates that the present summit glaciers are not experiencing ablation due to sensible heat (i.e. from positive air temperature). Additional support for this is provided by the Northern Icefield air temperature recorded from February 2000 to July 2002, which never exceeded −1.6 °C,”
It’s only the IPCC, Mad Magazine has more credibility.
Plants growing contrary to predicted behavior is just more proof of global warming.
Global warming is causing unpredictable responses that could only be attributable to global warming. Global warming is making Everything goofy. We’ve passed the tipping point.
Maybe the authors of those studies cited in IPCC should have consulted actual botanists before they jumped to their conclusions.
In the first attempts (during the late 19th and early 20th century) to determine climate change in recent (ie historical) times, the interest was mostly in precipitation. Thus, most of the proxies used at the time were established to measure predominantly rainfall. These proxies included tree ring data from forests growing at the dry margins of their range (eg redwoods in Sth. Cal). They also included agriculture records, and records of the success and failure of agri-based civilisation.
In those days, in mid lats, the climate impact concern was primarily with the impact on agriculture. More precipitation was mostly considered to have a positive effect, as more precipitation (eg, caused by the polar circles of storm paths reaching more equatorial) allowed ancient civilisation to flourish in north Africa and central Asia, where there is now desert. But also negative, and this especially in higher lats — eg they noted that too much rain in Ireland had contributed to the potato famine.
Thus, as with the plants in this study above, so with (agri-based) civilisation: in the early days of climatology, the research was largely based on the assumption that precipitation is the dominant driver of climate impacts.
It was with the concern during the 1960s and 70s over the anthropogenic temperature effect of aerosol and CO2 that temperature began to dominate also in the concern over the impacts of the changes that these might cause. This seems to be how we got to the question of precipitation changes as a secondary impact of climate change, as an impact caused by warming.
This shift in the science is apposite in Australia at the moment because, in fact, the big climate impacts over the last two decades has been lack of rainfall, and then too much. And that these variations in precipitation, which can be attributed to natural climatic variations (ENSO), are of such great proportion that they pale any concern over anthropogenic warming measured in fractions of a degree.
Note to science: There’s a reason top gardeners carry watering cans, not air conditioners.
Certainly is isn’t surprising to find another projection by the IPCC that is wrong, but I am also skeptical about this study. The case of wolves in Yellowstone is the reason why.
Long ago it was decided that ridding Yellowstone of wolves was the best ecological thing to do. The result was devastation. The elk population balloned like the national debt and that put enormous pressure on the ecosystem affecting many other species.
It was a disaster. Now the wolves are back and the elk are nervous. They only go near water when they need to and the ecosystem is much better off.
The effect of wolves was the most significant ecological impact in Yellowstone (other than the other stupid idea of not letting natural fires burn). Any study of plants and animals there would be flawedbecause the other effects dominate.
What other changes to animals and fauna were not included in this or other studies? The impact of man on apex predators has been very significant. That will cause more change than the fractional warming in the past 100 years.
theinconvenientskeptic.com
Actually, i found the whole article, and esp. the headline to be a head scratcher. Plants are not ‘driven ‘ up or down hills. They may extend their distribution up or down hill where the conditions permit, but they are not really ‘driven’. I suppose the word was used to fit the narrative. It should also be noted that plant communtities do not exist in a vacuum. One species cannot extend it’s range without another species (or group) retreating (or shifting). The point would have to be that plant communities are likely to move up hills as the conditions become warmer (milder) if the limiting factor is temperature (as it would be around here in northern BC). They will move downhill if the limiting factor is moisure (more specifically, a reduction in moisture levels in key seasons).
I find it less than satisfying to debunk studies which made no sense (or had no relevance) in the first place. They do no more to debunk global warming than they did to prove it in the first place. This kind of research is popular with grad students who need a thesis.
And let’s not forget that CO2 allows plants to start growing earlier in the Spring even without any warming. The two-weeks-early flowering in England can to accounted for by increased CO2 and not the non-warming of recent years. Of course, this means that some insects are out of sync with the plants, but they will adapt just fine to these slow changes. And the birds that eat the insects will figure out to follow the bugs.
So, changes in range are not only due to changes in temperature. Surely, in some cases rising CO2 has allowed regions to grow plants earlier (at lower temperatures), and attract insects earlier, and thus attracting other predators, etc.
Of course, the simple-minded (pro-warming) biologists will always interpret earlier growth and flowering to warmer temperatures, even in the absence of higher temperature readings. After all, they are sure it’s warming, why should they check?
A biologist in Texas, a couple of years ago, announced that virtually every mammal species in North America exhibited global warming effects by increased or decreased populations. OK, basic biology tells us that predator-prey relationships show a boom and bust pattern with a period that is largely decadal in scale. So, her results are not unexpected; they are totally predictable. The kicker is that the 10 years she covers is within the last 15 years during which there has been no statistically significant warming and even some cooling. Her study is complete drivel in terms of climate.
It might be useful as a mammal survey, to somebody. Oh well.
Ed Caryl says:
“Are they sure it was rainfall? Did they measure the temperature change at each location?”
http://climatesanity.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/correlation-coefficents-sorted-by-co2.gif
Tomorrow all will be well when it’s announced that climate change has always been expected to drive plants north, south, up or down. Funny how they change/modify their predictions/forecasts after the occurrence happens, and not before.
I think a better question to ask would be
Is the Flora shifting to a higher altitude or merely increasing it’s range to include the higher altitude?
If the alteration is a net increase in area coverage, it would likely mean that the biology is adapting to the increasing CO2 by creating a larger CO2 sink.
Help land managers and policy makers. Why would that be an objective before their prediction has been proven and before they have been asked. Or was that the reason for the research.
They are probably, already, making a list of conservation measures and endangered species and regulations to save the land, plants and animals before they are actually endangered. After all it pays to be prepared.
“UC Davis study shows plants moved downhill, not up, in warming world”
If they would have temperature data of the location where the study was performed I am sure the downhill move of the plants took place “in a cooling world”, not a warming one.
Here’s another one :
http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/newdelhi/Ramesh-backed-paper-questions-another-IPCC-claim/Article1-652754.aspx
IPCC not having a good day……….
The MSN article is a puff piece (different from a Puffington piece) in that it has a cute story line but no data. I’m left with a mental image of an evil Thermageddon herding Shasta daisies up slope 100 meters. And that makes me laugh.
The article does not say the range of these plants moved, or if the range of the plants expanded to include the higher slopes, or if there was a population congestion problem or soil condition/PH, or there were more or fewer competing flora/fauna in or out of abundance that may or may not have encouraged these ambulatory asters to pack up and move on, or any other idea of cause.
Plants are opportunistic, f’crapsake. They can’t be ushered, chased, or herded. They move into an area of easy pickings or better pickings and leave areas of lesser pickings. Herds of buffalo work the same way. They don’t hang around areas with lots of buff poo and barren soil – they go where the grass is greener and the air is fresher, so to speak.
So to continue this idea of opportunism – let’s say that increased CO2 in the atmosphere creates welts of stomata in the Shasta daisies and they find breathing easier up slope and not only that, there’s less competition, less shade, fewer critters eating them or in the case of tourons blustering forth from their Winnebago’s, fewer beheadings at the hands of greyheads who don’t realize just what a pest Shasta daisies are back home in Wisconsin.
So is there a serious science page that has the root data that inspired this MSN writer to MSU? (make stuff up)
Good to see science improving. Long may it continue.
The grey headed flying fox has not been affected by global warming – it’s boundary range change was due soley to land usage changes. That is, thousands upon thousands of acres of native bushland were turned into farm land. They are being disingenuous at best.