NPR

To Predict Effects Of Global Warming, Scientists Looked Back 20,000 Years

More than 40 researchers concluded that climate change would make ecosystems such as deciduous forests, grasslands and Arctic tundra unrecognizable.
As the climate warms, drought is killing large numbers of trees in California. Scientists are looking to the past to try and understand how the ecosystems of today may be changing.

A warming world could eventually make some of our most familiar ecosystems — deciduous forests, grasslands, Arctic tundra — unrecognizable.

That's the conclusion of a team of over 40 scientists who took a novel approach to predicting the effects of how human-caused global warming will alter ecosystems. They looked about 20,000 years back in time.

"Certainly many of my colleagues in climate-change ecology would give up a kidney to

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