Climate shift wiping out tropical and arctic ecosystems

Data released last month by University of Exeter  indicates that the climate is currently moving toward the poles at an average of 125km a decade and is accelerating. The implications are that Arctic ecosystems are disappearing with plants and animals being “simply pushed off the planet”

Also, an equatorial death zone is opening up, with the coral bleaching and mangrove death events of 2014 – 2016 a clear indicator of things to come.

There will be short term advantages as sub-tropical conditions allow the farming of sub-tropical crops in temperate climates, but the spread of deserts as arid conditions dominate southern Europe, southern Africa and Australia will quickly offset those advantages. Long term drought over the last decade has killed 66 million trees in California alone.

Map shows how Earth’s vegetation has changed since 1980s

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.81/full

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_528495_en.html

http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article85312432.html