Climate change drives expansion of Antarctic ice-free habitat

• Published in: Nature
• Main Authors: Lee, JR, Raymond, B, Bracegirdle, TJ, Chades, I, Fuller, RA, Shaw, JD, Terauds, A
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2017
• Subjects: Environmental Sciences; Ecological Applications; Ecological Impacts of Climate Change; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22996; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28658207; http://ecite.utas.edu.au/118139

Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity occurs almost exclusively in ice-free areas that cover less than 1% of the continent. Climate change will alter the extent and configuration of ice-free areas, yet the distribution and severity of these effects remain unclear. Here we quantify the impact of twenty-first century climate change on ice-free areas under two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate forcing scenarios using temperature-index melt modelling. Under the strongest forcing scenario, ice-free areas could expand by over 17,000 km 2 by the end of the century, close to a 25% increase. Most of this expansion will occur in the Antarctic Peninsula, where a threefold increase in ice-free area could drastically change the availability and connectivity of biodiversity habitat. Isolated ice-free areas will coalesce, and while the effects on biodiversity are uncertain, we hypothesize that they could eventually lead to increasing regional-scale biotic homogenization, the extinction of less-competitive species and the spread of invasive species.