Urgent Call: Establishing Meteorological Monitoring Stations to Safeguard Mountain Species from Climate Change

Species inhabiting 17 mountainous regions worldwide face an imminent risk of extinction owing to the swift pace of warming attributed to climate change. However, a study published in Nature underscores the crucial necessity of establishing additional meteorological monitoring stations in mountainous areas globally to gain a deeper insight into the extent of these threats.
Led by Research Fellow Sheng-Feng Shen from the Biodiversity Research Center of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, an international team devised a novel methodology to estimate climate velocities, pinpointing 17 mountainous regions highly vulnerable to global warming. These include the Brazilian highlands, the Iran-Pakistan region, Western America and Mexico, the Mediterranean basin, and Northeast Asia.
Climate velocities delineate the rate of climate condition alterations, illustrating the pace at which species must migrate to remain within their habitable zones. This research underscores the urgent need for tailored strategies aimed at biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation within these ecosystems.
Establishing meteorological observation stations in mountainous terrain poses considerable challenges, resulting in a dearth of long-term climate data for these regions globally. This knowledge gap, compounded by intricate topography, has hindered the comprehension of warming trends.
Sheng-Feng Shen highlighted that this study integrates atmospheric science theories, considering two pivotal factors influencing climatic speeds in mountains: surface warming and humidity levels. This approach mitigates the paucity of station data and evaluates temperature isotherm shifts in mountainous regions under climate change.
Identified regions with notably elevated climate velocities span 17 mountain areas, encompassing territories from the Alaska-Yukon region to Sumatra and from the Mediterranean to Japan, overlapping with several biodiversity hotspots.
Corresponding author I-Ching Chen, an associate professor at National Cheng Kung University, underscored the conspicuous lag in migration speeds among mountain species. “Even outside the identified 17 mountain areas, species may still confront the risk of falling behind climate velocities, underscoring the imperative of establishing monitoring networks early,” Chen emphasized.
Lead author Dr. Wei-Ping Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University’s Rowland Institute, underscored that in many humid climates, although warming is less pronounced, climate velocity can be substantial.
“The mountainous regions of Taiwan, akin to Japan, are more susceptible to humidity-induced high velocities than continental regions. Our study underscores the importance of factoring in humidity to fully grasp the variability of temperature isothermal shifts in mountainous areas worldwide,” Chan noted.
Shen emphasized, “The scarcity of meteorological observation data from mountains poses both the most valuable and the most significant challenge in our study.” He underscored the reliance on models for estimates in the absence of direct data, highlighting variations depending on the model and methodology used.
Furthermore, global data may not be conducive to making local predictions due to scale differences. The distinctive characteristics of diverse mountainous regions and the absence of local data imply that areas not highlighted in the study are not necessarily unaffected.
Hence, the study underscores the imperative of establishing more weather stations in mountains to enhance understanding and address the ramifications of climate change on species effectively.

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