Climate change and the biosphere

• Main Author: Momatiuk Eastcott Corbis
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Sea ice; Tundra
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.373.2887; http://www.lter.uaf.edu/dev2009/pdf/1290_Chapin_2008.pdf

From corals to human disease, scientists watching the effects of global warming are convinced: It's time to act. By F. Stuart Chapin Scientific assessments now clearly demonstrate the ecologic and societal consequences of human-induced climate change, as detailed by the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.1 Global warming spells danger for Earth's biomes, which in turn play an important role in climate change. On the following pages, you will read about some of the specific changes, from fruit flies to microbes, that scientists have observed. The effects have been most dramatic at high latitudes, where multiple processes contribute to decreased surface reflectivity, thus increasing the solar radiation absorbed and the heat transferred to the atmosphere. Retreating sea ice, earlier spring snowmelt, shrinking glaciers, and expansion of shrubs and trees within tundra all amplify high-latitude