Climate change could threaten Costa Rican cloud forests, other mountain ecosystems, say UMass Amherst researchers

Some interesting work applying modeling at a regional level. From the University of Massachussetts (Amherst): While melting Arctic sea ice and glaciers have become a symbol of climate change, new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst indicates that highland forests in Costa Rica could also be seriously affected by future changes in climate, reducing the number of species in a region famous for its biodiversity.

“Central America is a major, emerging “hot spot” in the tropics where climate change impacts on the environment will be pronounced, and the loss of species associated with climate has already been identified,” says doctoral candidate Ambarish Karmalkar of the UMass Amherst Climate System Research Center. He recently attended the first conference organized in Costa Rica to study this issue. “We have completed a regional climate model showing that many areas of Costa Rica will become warmer and dryer as climate change accelerates, and these changes will be amplified at higher elevations.”

….According to Karmalkar, Costa Rica has a unique geography that supports a stunning array of plants, animals and insects. The land begins at sea level on both the western Pacific coast and the eastern Caribbean coast, rising to over 3,000 meters above sea level in the central mountain range. As the land rises, differences in temperature and precipitation caused by elevation create an array of distinct ecosystems stacked on top of each other, each one housing a unique biological community.

…To predict the effects of climate change, a regional modeling system capable of accommodating the complex topography of Central America was chosen. After validating the computer model using rainfall and temperature data collected in Central America between 1961 and 1990, the team looked at what would happen if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled. The results of this medium-to-high scenario, called the A2 scenario in reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, were striking....

A canopy walkway disappearing into a cloud forest near Santa Elena, Costa Rica. Photograph taken by Dirk van der Made, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2