Earth Syst. Dynam. 4, 347–357 (2013)

Climate change has the potential to transform ecosystems as we know them with implications for the services they provide to humanity, including fundamental resources such as food and water. An understanding of how much change can be expected for a given level of climate warming can therefore inform climate mitigation targets and our understanding of how much we may need to adapt to cope with ecological changes.

Sebastian Ostberg from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, and co-workers investigate the implications of a 1.5 to 5 °C increase in global mean temperature for terrestrial biogeochemical processes and land surface properties, and use this to indicate the chance of ecological shifts and/or transitions.

They find that the majority of ecosystems are likely to be profoundly altered worldwide unless climate change can be limited to around 2 °C above preindustrial levels. Even relatively modest 2 °C changes, which are widely regarded as an upper limit for 'safe' levels of climate change, have the potential to alter up to one fifth of the land surface.