(Image source: BBC/Martin Warren)

BY TRACY PFEIFFER

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN

You're watching multisource science news analysis from Newsy.

A meta-study in the journal Science says -- changing global temperatures are pushing species towards the poles and higher altitudes.

Science Daily explains the findings.

“Species have moved towards the poles (further north in the northern hemisphere, to locations where conditions are cooler) at three times the rate previously accepted in the scientific literature, and they have moved to cooler, higher altitudes at twice the rate previously realised.”

Researchers looked at data for some 2,000 plant and animal species.

They concluded -- on average -- species are moving about 40 feet higher in altitude and almost 58 feet into higher latitudes per decade.

Study lead Chris Thomas of York University in Britain tells USA Today -- the analysis shows climate change is having a very real affect on Earth’s ecosystems.

CHRIS THOMAS, YORK UNIVERISTY: “Partly because there’s no other reasonable explanation for why everything should be moving to higher elevations and to higher latitudes, but also because we find the rate of movement is greater in the regions that have experienced most warming. …And there’s a risk that many species might become extinct as a result of all of these changes.”

And as for the species already living in these areas-- Thomas says, they’ll most likely just die out. A writer for the BBC explains.

“Take the polar bear, it does most of its hunting off the ice, and that ice is melting - this July was the lowest ever recorded Arctic ice cover - it has nowhere to go. However, the loss of this one bear species, although eminently emblematic, seems insignificant when compared to the number of species that are threatened at the top of tropical mountains.”

But The New York Times’ Green blog notes -- the data isn’t complete. Most of the analysis is based on research from Europe and North America. The writer says that issue leaves...

“...big holes in global understanding how species in one of the most biologically rich areas, the tropics, are responding to climate change. These unanswered questions are further complicated by the primary role of precipitation, as opposed to temperature, in distributing most species in the tropics. The precise effects of climate change on precipitation are still a source of debate and uncertainty.”

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