Climate-change ecology articles from across Nature Portfolio

Climate change will decrease Arctic Sea ice and increase light, but effects on polar ecosystems remain unclear. Here, the authors predict that warming waters and prey loss will threaten cold-water fish species and severely reduce their habitat by 2060.

Global warming is causing widespread coral mortality through bleaching. Here, simulations of coral eco-evolutionary dynamics forecast strong population declines in the 21st century. Coral reefs may collapse by 2100, unless global warming is limited to 2 °C, enabling corals to adapt and persist.

Increasing temperatures threaten cold-adapted pollinators such as Arctic bumblebees by disrupting their physiology. This study found that thorax acceleration during non-flight vibrations peaks at 25 °C for these bumblebees, while vibration frequency continues to increase with temperature.

Sub-lethal marine heatwaves is shown experimentally to lead to suppression of reproduction in sea urchins. This effect helps explain historical collapses in larval supply that affect population dynamics and is consistent for populations across the latitudinal range.

Climate change is disrupting the seasonal rhythms of soil life, which governs how plant carbon is transformed, stabilized, or lost. This Comment argues that a focus on the temporal coordination between above- and belowground biota is critical to sustaining resilient soil carbon sinks in a warming world.

High-resolution satellite maps of the contiguous USA spanning 35 years reveal a fundamental shift in land disturbances: the area affected by human-directed disturbances is decreasing, whereas land damaged by ‘wild’ disturbances (like fire, vegetation stress, wind, and geohazards) is surging. This work also uncovers evolving patterns in the frequency, size, and severity of disturbances.

When aridity levels exceed a threshold, dryland vegetation productivity decreases dramatically. A new global study shows that high levels of protection within conservation areas enhance the capacity of drylands to withstand more drying, significantly advancing the aridity threshold. This finding highlights the dilemma of global dryland management, that is, whether we should prioritize protection or continue dryland development.

Coral reefs are inextricably linked to their surrounding seascape, ecologically shaped by ocean circulation patterns and dependent on upwelled nutrients and planktonic subsidies. To better predict coral reef futures, we must more effectively quantify and incorporate these fundamental biophysical interactions.