{"id":11360,"date":"2020-06-19T17:50:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/covid-19-shutdowns-will-give-wildlife-only-short-term-relief-from-climate-change\/"},"modified":"2020-06-19T17:50:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:50:00","slug":"covid-19-shutdowns-will-give-wildlife-only-short-term-relief-from-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/covid-19-shutdowns-will-give-wildlife-only-short-term-relief-from-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"#COVID-19 shutdowns will give wildlife only short-term relief from climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#COVID-19 shutdowns will give wildlife only short-term relief from climate change<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"COVID-19<\/img>
\n Wildflowers proliferating in overgrown roadsides during the coronavirus pandemic are providing habitat for pollinators. Credit: Shutterstock
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There had to be a silver lining to the nearly universal lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the small benefits has been a temporarily lighter human footprint in many ecosystems.<\/p>\n

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Wildlife sightings are increasing, air quality is improving and carbon emissions are dropping. While these glimmers of positivity cannot come close to eclipsing the tragic human cost of the coronavirus, many are now asking what the pandemic will mean for wildlife around the globe. <\/p>\n

Global carbon dioxide emissions for 2020 are expected to fall by up to eight percent due to shutdowns, although the resumption of global activity could increase emissions and offset some of these gains. While this is a significant reduction in our expected emissions, it’s far from enough to turn the tide on climate change’s impacts on biodiversity.
\nClimate change can’t be stopped by COVID-19. This past April and May were both tied for the warmest on record, and if this trend continues then June will be the 426th month in a row where global average temperatures are above the 20th-century average. This serves as a strong reminder that even if we stop all carbon emissions today, we will still be fighting to reduce emissions and sequester carbon for a long time. The stakes are dangerously high.
\nLessons from the bees<\/b>
\nWe’ve known for a while that bumblebees and many other species have been declining over recent decades. Finding the driver of these declines is especially important for a group of pollinators that performs irreplaceable ecosystem and agriculture services.<\/p>\n

Recently, we showed that there is strong evidence that climate change has played a role in the declines of bumblebees across North America and Europe. In this new work, we found a mechanism that links climate change to these pollinator declines: climate chaos.
\nThe most common way to describe climate change is as the progressive rise in temperature, observed over decades, following the growth in atmospheric carbon concentrations, mostly due to human activities. Although gradual temperature changes can pose deadly threats, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events seems to be rising sharply as the greenhouse effect grows. Heatwaves, for example, are both longer and hotter.
\nAs Hamlet noted, “ay, there’s the rub.”
\nWildlife can tolerate some degree of warming, either by finding ways to move away from risky weather or evolutionary adaptation. But it’s much more difficult for species to tolerate increasingly chaotic extremes in weather such as prolonged drought and heat waves, or tropical storms. <\/p>\n

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