THE evidence is in. Global warming is already having a widespread impact on the world’s plants and animals, driving them closer to the poles and to higher altitudes, and altering the times of year they migrate and reproduce.
Two analyses published this week, the most comprehensive so far, strengthen similar but tentative conclusions made in 2001 in a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Both studies scoured scientific literature for data on thousands of plant and animal species, with strikingly similar conclusions (Nature vol 421, p 42 and p 57).
Of the species showing…
