Overview
- The peer-reviewed study, released Friday in Nature Ecology & Evolution, projects that continued warming would expose about 36% of species’ current land ranges to multiple, successive climate extremes by 2085.
- By 2050, models show 74% of habitats facing heatwaves, 16% wildfire, 8% drought, and 3% river floods, with species-rich regions in the Amazon, Africa, and Southeast Asia most exposed.
- The analysis introduces global wildfire exposure mapping and finds that in many regions fire risk may exceed drought as a threat to wildlife.
- In a rapid-mitigation pathway where warming later declines, the share of habitats exposed to multiple extreme events falls to about 9% by 2085.
- The authors call for research on species sensitivity and for conservation plans built to handle back-to-back extremes.