One only has to visit a tropical rainforest to discover a world filled with abundant treasures. It is entirely natural for people to want to protect these regions from any threat. Climate change has been perceived as a threat: cooler climates do not support tropical ecozones – but what about warmer climates? Concerns have been raised about plants being unable to adapt to the heat, and there are potential dangers of rainfall reductions. Geological research has revealed a remarkable period of Earth history at the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary, a very warm period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Although this has been much studied, little is known of the way the tropics responded to high temperatures globally (temperatures rose by about 5 degrees C) and to higher levels of carbon dioxide (perhaps 2.5 times the present level). One point that is agreed is that this rise in global temperatures was geologically rapid: “one of the most abrupt global warming events of the past 65 million years”. New research concludes that, fat from being compromised by heat stress, the tropical regions coped very well.
“Most scientists have assumed that, as carbon dioxide levels increase and the Earth warms, plant species diversity in the rainforests will start to dwindle, with plants unable to adapt to the heat. But a new study suggests that the opposite may be true. In the past, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and higher temperatures actually drove the evolution of far greater numbers of new rainforest plant species than were wiped out.”
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