Ecosystem Vulnerability and Climate Protection Goals

Impacts, especially on ecosystems, could be large and are often irreversible. This could have pronounced effects on current biomes, landscapes, communities and biodiversity. Ecosystems play a major role in global biogeochemical cycles. Changes in ecosystems could change that role and surprises in their response and functioning cannot be ruled out. Many of these responses are judged irreversible.

Global cumulative emissions, averaged concentrations and mean annual temperatures are all commonly used to specify and quantify impact levels. Such global indicators, however, do not adequately identify regional and local impacts. Important climatic aspects such as seasonality have to be considered. The task now placed on ecologists and other impact assessors is to develop more appropriate indicators and quantify them in such a way that 'dangerous interference with climate' becomes more obvious when exceeded.

The discussions and indicator analysis presented in this report represent only a first step, strongly defined by the availability of rough global models and data. The challenge to ecologists is to synthesise the observed changes in ecosystems over the last decades, determine their causes and entangle the climatic components to enhance the understanding of quantifying ecosystem change and the attributing causes.