Novel climates, no‐analog communities, and ecological surprises
Open accessAbstract
No-analog communities (communities that are compositionally unlike any found today) occurred frequently in the past and will develop in the greenhouse world of the future. The well documented no-analog plant communities of late-glacial North America are closely linked to “novel” climates also lacking modern analogs, characterized by high seasonality of temperature. In climate simulations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change A2 and B1 emission scenarios, novel climates arise by 2100 AD, primarily in tropical and subtropical regions. These future novel climates are warmer than any present climates globally, with spatially variable shifts in precipitation, and increase the risk of species reshuffling into future no-analog communities and other ecological surprises. Most ecological models are at least partially parameterized from modern observations and so may fail to accurately predict ecological responses to these novel climates. There is an urgent need to test the robustness of ecological models to climate conditions outside modern experience.
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Climate change and human-pressures are already pushing ecological systems into novel states.
“This is particularly the case since climate change and human-pressures are already pushing ecological systems into novel states (Williams and Jackson, 2007; Williams et al., 2021).”
From A Fate Worse Than Warming? Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Global Catastrophic Risk (2021) · cites this paper as Williams and Jackson, 2007
The section “Individualistic species shifts and no-analog communities: a conceptual framework” reports species responding to current climate change. But “Implications for ecological forecasting” says human pressures will interact with novel climates, while the paper describes novel communities chiefly as a future risk; it does not establish that those pressures are already pushing ecological systems into novel states. Page numbers were unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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“This is particularly the case since climate change and human-pressures are already pushing ecological systems into novel states (Williams and Jackson, 2007;Williams et al., 2021).”
Background
- Authors
- Williams, J. W., & Jackson, S. T.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- University of Wyoming (US)
- Corresponding author
- Williams, John W.
- Venue
- Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2007-11
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 475-482
- ISSN
- 1540-9295 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1992239134
- Cited by
- 1,736
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 74 · 2025: 79 · 2024: 100 · 2023: 89 · 2022: 94 · 2021: 105 · 2020: 99 · 2019: 133 · 2018: 106 · 2017: 105 · 2016: 101 · 2015: 103 · 2014: 98 · 2013: 124 · 2012: 109
- FWCI
- 37.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0345012, 0613952, 0507999, 0716471)
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecological Modeling › Species Distribution and Climate Change
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Keywords
- novel climates, climate change, floristic composition, climate model parameterization, precipitation change, emission scenarios
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