◄Previous: 3.3 Sea level rise

# 4 Predictions for life: Natural systems

What impacts will future climate change and ocean acidification have on life?

You saw in Session 2 that many marine species such as fish are migrating their habitats from one region to another much faster than terrestrial species. This is because there are fewer physical barriers preventing them from adapting in this way.

Figure 9 shows the IPCC (2013) estimates of how fast different species can migrate, along with the average speeds necessary under different RCP scenarios (the ‘climate velocity’, the rate of movement of the climate across the landscape). Freshwater molluscs can migrate rapidly, with the white bar extending far above most predicted climate change. But small terrestrial species and, of course, vegetation, are much more limited. For them, migration speeds may not be sufficient to respond, i.e. to adapt, to RCP6.0 or RCP8.5 scenarios of climate change. Those that cannot adapt will see their population numbers decrease or become extinct in part or all of their ranges.

Figure 9 Who can outrun climate change? Maximum speed at which species can migrate, along with corresponding speeds required for each RCP scenario (adapted from IPCC, 2014).
◄Contents►Next: 4.1 Ocean acidification

OpenLearn - Could we control our climate?
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.