Emergence of a frozen Stone Age mummy from a melting glacier in the Oetztal Alps indicates that glacial ice is more reduced today than at any time during the past 5,000 years. Spawning was 9 to 10 days earlier over a 17-year period. The four earliest leafing dates occurred in the past decade, a response to increasing temperatures during January to March over the past 41 years. Alpine plants retreat up mountains . Over a 70 to 90 year period, alpine plants in the Austrian and Swiss Alps moved higher up on mountain slopes in response to an increase in average annual temperature.
Butterfly ranges shift northward .
22 of 35 butterfly species studied have shifted their ranges northwards by 22 to 150 miles, consistent with a 1.4 degree Fahrenheit warming over the past century. Mollusc range shift . 20 percent of 40 mollusc species in a national park have changed their distribution in response to warming. Over a 20-year period, many birds have extended the northern margins of their ranges by an average of about 12 miles. Spain lost more than 1.2 million acres of forest to wildfires in 1994, and 370,000 acres burned in each of Greece and Italy in 1998.