Extinction risk from climate change
In 2019 the Australian government made it official: the Bramble Cay melomys, a small mammal that lived on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, was extinct. It was the first mammal known to have died out because of human-induced sea level rise.
The melomys raises a much larger question about extinction risk from climate change. How does a warming climate actually kill a species? How often has it already done so? And how many plants and animals do scientists expect to lose at different levels of warming? The answers depend on who is counting, and on what they choose to count.
A niche is the set of temperatures and weather patterns a species has evolved to live in, and climate change pushes the edges of it. When conditions drift outside the niche, a species normally has two escapes. It can adapt in place through microevolution, or it can move to a habitat that still suits it. The trouble is that recent climate change is very fast. Cold-blooded animals, a group that includes amphibians, reptiles and all invertebrates, may struggle to find anywhere suitable to go.
Extreme weather offers a quicker route to disappearance. Climate change makes extreme events both more frequent and more intense, and a single event can directly wipe out a regional population. Species in coastal and low-lying island habitats face a further danger from rising seas.
The fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis shows how disease fits in. Climate change has been linked with the increased prevalence and global spread of infectious diseases that affect wildlife. This fungus is one of the main drivers of the worldwide decline in amphibian populations.
Researchers have also named a quieter loss, the extinction of species' interactions. If two species that depend on each other move in opposite directions as the climate shifts, their partnership can come apart. The benefits that ecosystems draw from those partnerships are then at risk too.
The timing of that breakdown depends on emissions. Under the high-emissions scenario known as RCP8.5, ecosystems in the tropical oceans would be the first to suffer abrupt disruption, before 2030. Tropical forests and polar environments would follow by 2050. If warming eventually reaches 4 degrees Celsius, 15% of ecological assemblages would see over 20% of their species abruptly disrupted. If warming stays below 2 degrees, fewer than 2% would.
Of 864 species extinctions recorded by the IUCN, only 20 are considered to be possibly the result of climate change, wholly or in part. The evidence linking them to a changing climate is typically judged weak or insubstantial. Nearly all the irreversible biodiversity loss to date has come from other human pressures, such as habitat destruction. Climate change has not yet been a major contributor to the ongoing Holocene extinction.
The IUCN list of those 20 reads like a catalogue of tangled causes. Several snails, including Rhachistia aldabrae, are tied to drought. The bird Moho braccatus was hit by hurricanes, but also by habitat destruction and introduced predators and diseases. For the frog Incilius periglenes, the suspects are global warming, chytrid fungus and pollution. The parrot Psephotus pulcherrimus lost food to drought and overgrazing, alongside introduced species, disease, habitat destruction and overharvesting.
The stronger evidence is for local losses at the warm edges of species' ranges. Warm-edge populations may already sit at the limits of what they can tolerate, so they are the logical place to look. Hundreds of animal species have been documented shifting their ranges, usually toward the poles and uphill.
An Australian review of 519 observational studies covering 74 years makes the point with numbers. It found more than 100 cases where extreme weather cut an animal species' abundance by over 25%. In 31 of them, the species vanished completely from the local area. Populations failed to recover to their earlier levels in 38% of the cases.
The pressure is already measurable across the Red List. As of 2021-19% of species on the IUCN Red List were being affected by climate change. Of 4000 species analyzed for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, half had shifted toward higher latitudes or elevations. Among species with long-term records, two-thirds had seen spring events arrive earlier.
The IUCN turns lost range into risk. A species that loses over half its geographic range is classed as endangered, equivalent to a likelihood of extinction above 20% over the next 10-100 years. Losing 80% or more makes it critically endangered, with an extinction likelihood above 50% over the same period.
Misreadings have crept in as well. In 2008 the white lemuroid possum was reported as the first mammal driven extinct by climate change. That report was a misunderstanding. One population in the mountain forests of North Queensland is severely threatened because the animals cannot survive extended temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius. Another population, 100 kilometres to the south, remains in good health.
The waters of Hudson Bay are now ice-free for three weeks longer than they were thirty years ago. Polar bears prefer to hunt on sea ice, so each extra week without it matters. A 2020 study in Nature Climate Change looked at the bears' future. Under high emissions, at most a few high-Arctic populations would remain by 2100. Under a more moderate scenario the species would survive the century, but several major subpopulations would still be wiped out.
Other Arctic animals depend on cold in less obvious ways. Snowy owls and gyrfalcons prey on lemmings, which use the cold winter to their advantage. Snowshoe hares face a mismatch between their snow camouflage and an increasingly snow-free landscape.
Salmon and cutthroat trout need cold, glacier-fed water to survive and to reproduce. Reduced glacier runoff can leave streams too weak to support them. Salmon typically breed when stream flow is high and migrate to the ocean after spawning. With less snowfall, lower flows are expected to affect the spawning of millions of salmon.
In southeast Alaska, the sea is rising by 3.96 centimetres a year, pushing salt water inland. Sockeye salmon can live in both salt and fresh water. Even so, they cannot spawn without fresh water, so losing a freshwater reservoir stops them reproducing in the spring.
Ocean krill prefer cold water and are the primary food of the blue whale. Warmer-than-ideal conditions raise the metabolism of marine invertebrates and shrink their body size, even when they forage more. Smaller bodies raise the risk of predation. Even a slight temperature increase during development impairs growth efficiency and survival in rainbow trout. Under most climate models, cold-water and cool-water fish could fall by up to 50% in the majority of U.S. freshwater streams.
Penguins illustrate the problem from the south. As early as 2008, researchers estimated that each 0.26 degree Celsius rise in Southern Ocean temperature cuts king penguin populations by 9%. Under the worst-case trajectory, king penguins lose at least two of their eight breeding sites. About 70% of the species, some 1.1 million pairs, would have to relocate.
For emperor penguins, 80% of populations would be at risk of extinction by 2100 with no mitigation. That falls to 31% under the 2-degree Paris Agreement goal and 19% under the 1.5-degree goal.
A 27-year study of the world's largest Magellanic penguin colony, published in 2014, found that climate-driven extreme weather kills 7% of chicks in an average year. In some years it accounts for up to 50% of chick deaths. Breeding pairs in the colony have fallen by 24% since 1987. Chinstrap penguins are declining because Antarctic krill are declining. For Adélie penguins, one-third of colonies along the West Antarctic Peninsula are expected to be in decline by 2060, and those colonies represent about 20% of the species.
The first major attempt to estimate the damage appeared in the journal Nature in 2004. It examined 1103 endemic or near-endemic plant and animal species and suggested that 15-37% would be committed to extinction by 2050. Little was known then about how well species could disperse or adapt, or how much area they need to persist. Another 2004 paper found that equally plausible assumptions could give anything from 5.6% to 78.6%. The original authors disputed that.
Between 2005 and 2011-74 studies of climate-driven extinction risk were published. A 2011 review found they projected the loss of 11.2% of species by 2100 on average. Predictions extrapolated from observed responses averaged 14.7%, while model-based estimates averaged 6.7%. Under IUCN criteria, 7.6% of species would become threatened by model predictions, but 31.7% by extrapolated observations. The following year, the gap was blamed mainly on models that failed to account properly for species relocating at different rates and for emerging competition among species.
The 2019 global assessment from the intergovernmental biodiversity panel IPBES put the number of species on Earth at 8 million, including 5.5 million insect species. It found that one million species face extinction from five main stressors. These include 40% of amphibians, almost a third of reef-building corals, more than a third of marine mammals and 10% of all insects. Land use and sea use change ranked first, direct exploitation such as overfishing second, and climate change third, ahead of pollution and invasive species. The report estimated that 2 degrees Celsius of warming would threaten about 5% of all species with extinction even without the other four stressors. At 4.3 degrees, it would be 16%.
The February 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report gave a median and a maximum for species at high risk at each level of warming. At 1.5 degrees the median was 9% and the maximum 14%. At 3 degrees the figures were 12% and 29%. At 5 degrees the median was only 15%, but the maximum reached 48%. The maximum climbs far faster than the median.
In July 2022 a survey of 3331 biodiversity experts estimated that around 30% of all species, with a range of 16-50%, had been threatened with extinction since the year 1500. That count includes species already gone. For 2 degrees of warming, the experts estimated that about 25% of species would be threatened or driven extinct, with a range of 15-40%. At 5 degrees they put it at 50%, with a range of 32-70%.
Two big syntheses followed in 2024. A review of 82 studies projecting the distribution of over 400,000 species suggested that 13.9-27.6% would likely go extinct by 2070 under the moderate RCP4.5 scenario. Under high-emission RCP8.5 the range was 22.7-31.6%.
A second synthesis, of 5 million projections from 485 studies, gave lower figures by 2100. Warming of 1.5 degrees would threaten 1.8% of species. Stopping at 2024's level of 1.3 degrees would still cause extinctions of 1.6%. The current emissions trajectory fits with roughly 5%. Very high warming of 4.3 or 5.4 degrees would likely mean extinctions of 15% and 30% of all species.
The fossil record offers a different yardstick. Research in 2021 found that the Big Five mass extinctions were associated with warming of around 5.2 degrees Celsius. It estimated that the same warming today would wipe out about 75% of marine animals. In 2022, Kunio Kaiho of Tohoku University disputed this after reanalyzing sedimentary rock records.
Kaiho's own scenario assumed 3 degrees of warming by 2100 and 3.8 degrees by 2500. He estimated 8% of marine species and 16-20% of terrestrial animal species would go extinct, a minor mass extinction. He cautioned that warming must stay below 2.5 degrees to avoid losing over 10% of animal species. He also estimated that a minor nuclear war between India and Pakistan would cause extinctions of 10-20% of species, and a major war between the United States and Russia 40-50%.
Corals are the starkest case. Updated 2022 estimates show that at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, only 0.2% of the world's coral reefs would still withstand marine heatwaves, compared with 84% today. At 2 degrees and beyond the figure falls to 0%. Yet a 2021 study found that each square metre of reef holds about 30 individual corals, and that the total is around half a trillion. That is equivalent to all the trees in the Amazon, or all the birds in the world. Most individual coral species may therefore avoid extinction, even as reefs stop functioning as the ecosystems we know.
A 2022 paper on marine life found that 45% of marine species at risk of extinction are affected by climate change. Right now it does less harm than overfishing, transportation, urban development and water pollution. If emissions rise unchecked, though, climate change would matter as much as all of those combined by the end of the century. Continued high emissions until 2300 would risk a mass extinction equivalent to the Permian-Triassic event, known as the Great Dying. Staying at low emissions would cut future climate-driven ocean extinctions by over 70%.
A 2021 study of around 11,500 freshwater fish species found that 1-4% would likely lose over half their range at 1.5 degrees, and 24-63% at 4.5 degrees. The spread reflects how well fish are assumed to disperse, with the highest figures assuming they cannot move at all.
Bumblebees give one of the clearest observed signals. A 2020 study in the journal Science followed more than 60 bee species across two continents. It compared a baseline period of 1901-1974 with the years 2000 to 2014. North American bumblebee populations had fallen by 46%, and European ones by 14%. The researchers described rates "consistent with a mass extinction" that were independent of land use change. The strongest effects were in southern regions, where extreme warm years had become frequent and exceeded the species' historical temperature ranges.
Lizards supplied a test of whether models match reality. A 2010 study led by Barry Sinervo surveyed 200 sites in Mexico and found 24 local extinctions of Sceloporus lizards since 1975. A model built from those losses also predicted extinctions observed elsewhere in the world. It projected that lizard extinctions worldwide would reach 20% by 2080, and up to 40% in tropical ecosystems, where lizards sit closer to their physiological limits.
Amphibians are among the most exposed vertebrates. A 2013 study estimated that 670-933 amphibian species, or 11-15%, were both highly vulnerable to climate change and already on the IUCN Red List. The IPCC report found salamanders more than twice as vulnerable as other amphibians. At 2 degrees nearly 7% of salamander species face a very high risk, against fewer than 3% for most amphibians. At 3.2 degrees the figures are 24% for salamanders and 11% for amphibians overall.
For birds, a 2012 estimate held that each degree of warming results in between 100 and 500 land bird extinctions. At 3.5 degrees by 2100, it estimated 600-900 land bird extinctions, with 89% of them in the tropics.
Plants and fungi look different. A 2020 meta-analysis found that 39% of vascular plant species were likely threatened with extinction, but only 4.1% of that figure could be attributed to climate change. Land use change dominated. The researchers suggested this might partly reflect the slower pace of research on climate effects in plants. For fungi, 9.4% were estimated to be threatened by climate change, while 62% were threatened by other forms of habitat loss.
In the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, Southern Pied Babblers, Southern Yellow-billed Hornbills and Southern Fiscals face a quiet squeeze. Temperatures are not projected to become hot enough to kill these birds outright. They would, however, prevent them from keeping enough body mass and energy to breed. By 2022, breeding success of the hornbills had already collapsed in the hottest, southern parts of the desert. Researchers predicted those subpopulations would disappear by 2027.
Two Ethiopian species, the White-tailed Swallow and the Ethiopian Bush-crow, would lose 68-84% and more than 90% of their range by 2070. Their ranges are already small, so even limited climate change could leave too little room for a viable population. According to 2018 research, Madagascar would lose 60% of its species at 4.5 degrees Celsius of warming.
In Europe, a 2010 study of 2,632 species around mountain ranges found that 36-55% of alpine species would lose more than 80% of their suitable habitat by 2070-2100. A 2022 study then found the earlier work had simulated abrupt, stepwise warming. Under gradual warming, alpine plant diversity rebounds after mid-century. Under RCP8.5, that rebound is deceptive. It is driven by colonization of niches left by vulnerable plants such as Androsace chamaejasme and Viola calcarata, which go extinct by mid-century or earlier. The same collapse follows at the century's end, because each degree of warming reduces total species population growth by 7%.
Beneath the Alps, Troglohyphantes cave spiders face habitat losses of about 45% by 2050 even under the low-emission RCP2.6 scenario. In the Mediterranean Sea, the seagrass Posidonia oceanica could lose 75% of its habitat by 2050 under the worst-case scenario. In Germany's Bavaria, forty years of warming pushed out cold-adapted grasshoppers, butterflies and dragonflies and favored warm-adapted ones.
In the Americas, the picture mixes heat, water and people. A 2016 study tied warming in the Caribbean to skewed sex ratios among sea turtles, with more females hatching. Researchers projected that just 2.4% of Chelonia hatchlings would be male by 2030, and 0.4% by 2090. In the Amazon, climate change alone could cut tree species richness by 31-37% by 2050. Deforestation alone could cut it by 19-36%, and together the two might reach 58%.
In Minnesota, a 2023 study of fish in 900 lakes found that a 4 degree Celsius rise in July water temperature would remove cold-water cisco from 167 lakes. That is 61% of the fish's habitat in the state. Warm-water bluegill would increase by around 10%. In Hawaii, a 2015 projection warned that native forest birds face extinction from the spread of avian malaria under RCP8.5, but would persist under RCP4.5.
The 2019-20 Australian bushfire season showed how fast extreme events can act. Kate's leaf tailed gecko lost over 80% of its available habitat. Only one individual may have survived out of a Kangaroo Island dunnart population of 500. The fires also killed 8,000 koalas in New South Wales alone. Further north, a 2013 paper examined 12,900 islands in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Sea level rise of 1 metre would completely drown some islands and cause total habitat loss for 37 vertebrate species.
On Rùm, one of the Inner Hebrides islands in Scotland, red deer are giving birth three days earlier with each decade of a long study. The gene that selects for earlier birth has spread because the deer carrying it have more calves over their lifetime. Climate change has literally changed the deer's gene pool. In Britain, spring butterflies are appearing an average of 6 days earlier than two decades ago.
Many species are also simply moving. Antarctic hair grass is colonizing parts of Antarctica where its survival was once limited. Between 5% and 20% of the land area of the United States is likely to end up with a different biome by the end of the century.
Movement can only go so far. Globally, just 5% of ectotherm species' present locations lie within 50 kilometres of a place that would stay fully suitable by 2100, even under mid-range warming. Completely random dispersal has an 87% chance of sending a species somewhere worse. Evolution is too slow as well. An artificial selection experiment showed fish can evolve greater warming tolerance, but only at about 0.04 degrees Celsius per generation.
The human side of species loss is clearest in Hurungwe district, Zimbabwe. Women there place beehives along the borders of fields and villages to keep elephants away from their crops. Communities that rely directly on natural resources, especially in Africa, feel the loss of plants and animals first.
For wildlife itself, the first remedy is to hold warming as low as possible. After that comes protecting current and likely future habitat, in efforts such as 30x30. A more radical option is assisted migration, either passively through wildlife corridors or by actively transporting species. It is controversial because rescued species may become invasive. Moving polar bears to Antarctica would be relatively easy, but the damage to its ecosystem is considered too great.
Species extinct in the wild may be kept alive in artificial surroundings until a natural habitat is restored. If captive breeding fails, embryo cryopreservation has been proposed as a last resort. Assisted migration has already been used for several tree species in North America. The Torreya Guardians have coordinated a program to save Torreya taxifolia from extinction.
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Common questions
What is extinction risk from climate change?
Extinction risk from climate change is the chance that plant or animal species die out because warming pushes conditions outside the niche they evolved for. Species can normally adapt in place or move, but recent climate change is very fast.
Has climate change already caused species to go extinct?
Few extinctions have been firmly tied to climate change. Only 20 of 864 recorded extinctions are considered by the IUCN to possibly result from it, and the evidence is typically weak. The Bramble Cay melomys, confirmed extinct in 2019, was the first mammal lost to human-induced sea level rise.
How many species could go extinct from climate change?
Estimates vary widely by method and warming level. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report put the median share of species at high risk at 9% at 1.5 degrees Celsius and 15% at 5 degrees. A 2024 synthesis of 5 million projections found around 5% of species could go extinct by 2100 on the current trajectory.
Which animals are most at risk from climate change extinction?
Cold specialists, coral reefs and amphibians are among the most exposed. Only 0.2% of coral reefs could withstand marine heatwaves at 1.5 degrees Celsius, and salamanders are more than twice as vulnerable as most amphibians. Polar bears and penguins also face major population losses.
How does climate change cause extinction of wildlife?
Climate change drives extinction through habitat shifts that species cannot follow, extreme weather, sea level rise, the spread of wildlife disease such as the chytrid fungus, and mismatches between interacting species. These pathways often combine with habitat destruction and other human pressures.
What can be done to prevent extinction risk from climate change?
Reducing warming to the lowest possible level is the first step, followed by protecting habitat through efforts such as 30x30. Assisted migration, captive breeding and embryo cryopreservation are further options, though assisted migration is controversial because moved species may become invasive.
All sources
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