The Velocity of Climate Change and Species Tracking in Global Mountains

Mr Wei-Ping Chan^1,2,3, Dr Chris Thomas⁴, Dr Hung-Chi Kuo⁵, Dr I-Ching Chen⁶, Dr Sheng-Feng Shen¹

¹Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ²Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, ³Bachelor Program in Data Science and Management, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan, ⁴Department of Biology, University of York, York, UK, ⁵Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ⁶Department of Life Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

Species have been moving in response to recent changes in climate, but there is still a lack of systematic assessment on how climate change is affecting species movements in global mountains. Here, we provide the first global assessment of climate change velocity (in m year-¹) in mountain regions by dividing the temperature lapse rate (in °C km-¹) into the warming rate at terrain surfaces (in °C year-¹). We applied the moist adiabatic lapse rate (MALR), derived from local temperature and water vapor, and found that MALR varies substantially between 3 and 9 °C km-¹ around the world. Using this approach, we identified 23 high-velocity mountain regions and found that increasing surface temperature leads to higher climate velocity, especially in dry mountain regions. Intriguingly, high climate velocity could also occur in wet regions with lower lapse rates, especially in mountains go NE-SW and NW-SE in North and South hemisphere, respectively. We then re-estimated the rates at which species would have to shift to keep pace with climate change. We found that the degree of lagging may be overestimated in previous meta-analyses. In the cases of low climate velocity, mountain species track reasonably well with climate velocity. In contrast, upslope migrations of mountain species substantially lagged behind the climate change in regions with high climate velocity. In conclusion, our study helps identify mountains with high climate velocity, which can inform conservation priorities as well as provide a better physical basis for understanding the ecological impacts of global climate change in mountain regions.

Biography:

I am interested in under-laying physical environment shaping global ecological patterns, and I pay special attention to those impacts of climate change.