Half of all plant and animal species could be forced into extinction by rising global temperatures, mirroring five climate-triggered mass extinctions of the past, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Scientists from the universities of Leeds and York used the fossil record for the past 520 million years to estimate levels of biodiversity and compared them with sea surface temperatures at the time. Their results showed that during warm periods, extinction rates rose and biodiversity remained low, but during cooler phases, the opposite occurred. One phase saw 95 per cent of species wiped out following a period of sharply rising temperatures.

‘Our results provide the first clear evidence that global climate may explain substantial variation in the fossil record in a simple and consistent manner,’ said one of the paper’s authors, Dr Peter Mayhew from the University of York. ‘If our results hold for current warming – the magnitude of which is comparable with the long-term fluctuations in Earth climate – they suggest extinctions will increase.’


January 2008