Global Change Biology

Global change biology examines how anthropogenic drivers—especially rising greenhouse-gas concentrations, land-use conversion and pollution—alter the structure and function of ecosystems across the planet. Key processes include shifts in species distributions, declines in biodiversity, changes in phenology and community composition, and disruptions of biogeochemical cycles with cascading implications for ecosystem productivity and service provision. Warming alters physiological tolerances and phenological synchrony, prompting range shifts and local extinctions. Concurrently, land-use change fragments habitats and degrades ecological networks, compounding the impacts of climate change. In the ocean, acidification and deoxygenation compromise calcifiers and disrupt food webs, while physical changes in circulation patterns affect nutrient supply and carbon storage. The near-linear relationship between cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and global temperature change underpins the carbon-budget framework, but non-linear feedbacks emerge during net-negative emission and overshoot scenarios. Advances in modelling and long-term observation are revealing the inertia of climate and carbon sinks, the persistence of extinction debts and colonisation credits, and the role of ecological complexity in buffering or amplifying change. Integrating ecological, physiological and Earth-system perspectives is essential to forecast future trajectories, inform mitigation and adaptation strategies, and safeguard the resilience of natural and managed ecosystems under rapidly changing conditions.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Emergent-constraint analyses have refined estimates of the remaining carbon budgets for 1.5 °C and 2 °C of global warming by linking historical observations with multi-model projections. These studies confirm that cumulative emissions and warming remain closely proportional up to at least 4 °C, while reducing budget uncertainties by incorporating observed climate sensitivities.

Idealised overshoot experiments in an Earth-system model demonstrate that, during periods of net-negative CO₂ emissions, the physico-chemical uptake of CO₂ by the ocean may partly reverse, yet the biological carbon pump continues to sequester carbon and can dominate oceanic storage on centennial timescales. This finding highlights the importance of biological processes in sustaining marine carbon sinks under removal scenarios.

Assessments of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) durability show that the longevity of stored CO₂ critically influences temperature outcomes. Models indicate that centennial-scale storage fails to uphold net-zero warming targets when residual emissions persist, whereas multi-millennial sequestration—such as in geological reservoirs—is required to prevent additional long-term warming.

Global Change Biology publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in global change biology across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Carbon budget: The cumulative CO₂ emissions compatible with limiting global warming to a specified threshold.

Biological carbon pump: The transport of carbon from the surface ocean to the deep sea via biological production and sinking organic matter.

Emergent constraint: A relationship identified across climate models and observations that reduces projection uncertainties by linking a future response to present-day variability.

Extinction debt: The future loss of species in areas already rendered unsuitable by environmental change but where populations have not yet vanished.

Colonisation credit: The potential for species to occupy newly suitable habitats following environmental change, reflecting a lag in range expansion.

Ocean acidification: The reduction of seawater pH and carbonate saturation due to absorption of excess atmospheric CO₂, affecting calcifying organisms and ecosystem interactions.

References

1. Emergent constraints on carbon budgets as a function of global warming. Nature Communications (2024).
2. Marine carbon sink dominated by biological pump after temperature overshoot. Nature Geoscience (2024).
3. Durability of carbon dioxide removal is critical for Paris climate goals. Communications Earth & Environment (2024).
4. Functional biodiversity loss along natural CO2 gradients. Nature Communications (2018).
5. Are physiological and ecosystem-level tipping points caused by ocean acidification? A critical evaluation. Earth System Dynamics (2024).
6. Asymmetric response of South Asian summer monsoon rainfall in a carbon dioxide removal scenario. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2023).