The extent to which ecosystems react to climate change varies significantly throughout the world, with areas proving to be more sensitive to the changing climate than others, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Norway and the United Kingdom.
“The Arctic tundra, parts of the boreal forest belt, the wet tropical forests of South America, western Africa, and southeast Asia/New Guinea, alpine regions worldwide, steppe and prairie regions of central Asia and North and South America, the Caatinga deciduous forest in eastern South America, and eastern areas of Australia displayed high [vegetation sensitivity index] values, indicating a high sensitivity to climate variability over the past 14 years,” the researchers, from the University of Bergen in Norway and the U.K’s University of Oxford and Royal Botanic Gardens, wrote in a Feb. 17 article published in the journal Nature.
The researchers also found that these areas can be further categorized by which effect of climate change they are most sensitive to. “Whereas the Caatinga biome in Brazil and the prairie and grassland regions of North America and Asia are most sensitive to variations in water availability, alpine regions (for example, the Andes) demonstrate strong sensitivity to temperature, and high-latitude tundra areas exhibit strong responses to both temperature and cloud cover variability,” the report says.
