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

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 have data from the future,” says Stephen Jackson, director of the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and an ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. “But we’re not going to get that.”