page_title: Effects of climate change on plant biodiversity
section_title: Effects of temperature
hierarchical_section_title: Effects of climate change on plant biodiversity / Modern Context / Effects of CO2 / Effects of temperature
caption_attribution_description: English: Global annual surface temperature in 2005, relative to 1951-1980 mean. Data based on surface air measurements at meteorological stations and ship and satellite measurements for sea surface temperature.
context_page_description: Climate change is any significant long term change in the expected pattern, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. Environmental conditions play a key role in defining the function and distribution of plants, in combination with other factors. Changes in long term environmental conditions that can be collectively coined climate change are known to have had enormous impacts on current plant diversity patterns; further impacts are expected in the future. It is predicted that climate change will remain one of the major drivers of biodiversity patterns in the future. Human actions are currently triggering the sixth major mass extinction our Earth has seen, changing the distribution and abundance of many plants.
context_section_description: Increases in temperature raise the rate of many physiological processes such as photosynthesis in plants, to an upper limit, depending on the type of plant. These increases in photosynthesis and other physiological processes are driven by increased rates of chemical reactions and roughly a doubling of enzymatic product conversion rates for every 10 °C increase in temperature.  Extreme temperatures can be harmful when beyond the physiological limits of a plant which will eventually lead to higher desiccation rates.
  One common hypothesis among scientists is that the warmer an area is, the higher the plant diversity. This hypothesis can be observed in nature, where higher plant biodiversity is often located at certain latitudes (which often correlates with a specific climate/temperature).
caption: Global annual surface temperature anomaly in 2005, relative to 1951-1980 mean
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