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Climate change impacts on pollination

Nature Plants volume 2, Article number: 16092 (2016) Cite this article

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Climate change will pose diverse challenges for pollination this century. Identifying and addressing these challenges will help to mitigate impacts, and avoid a scenario whereby plants and pollinators are in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’.

The consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is that substantial climate change has already occurred since the 1950s. It is likely that in the short term (2016–2035), the global mean surface air temperature will increase to between 0.3 and 0.7 °C higher than 1986–2005 levels. Greater increases of between 0.4 and 2.6 °C are projected later in the century (2046–2065), although the extent of this warming will depend on future greenhouse gas emissions3. As the global average temperature increases, extreme high temperatures are also expected to become more frequent: this is indicated by previous warming and greater-than-expected increases in heatwave frequency and magnitude4.

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Figure 1: Projected impacts of climate change (both gradual change and extreme weather events) on insect pollinators, and potential mitigation options2.
Figure 2: Predicted risks for European bumble-bees and butterflies under different scenarios of climate change, assuming full (left) or no (right) dispersal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ, Theodor-Lieser-Strasse 4, Halle, 06210, Germany

    Josef Settele

  2. iDiv, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, Leipzig, 04103, Germany

    Josef Settele

  3. Centre for Agri-Environmental Research, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, RG6 6AR, UK

    Jacob Bishop & Simon G. Potts

Authors
  1. Josef Settele
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  2. Jacob Bishop
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  3. Simon G. Potts
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Correspondence to Simon G. Potts.

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Settele, J., Bishop, J. & Potts, S. Climate change impacts on pollination. Nature Plants 2, 16092 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.92

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