Climate change is making animals and plants move.



Animals and plants are reacting to climate change very quickly.

In some cases they move to higher places, in others they move north or south.

Scientists from the University of York  found that, on average, living things have "moved uphill" at 12.2 metres per decade.

They are moving away from the equator at 17.6 kilometres per decade.
These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the Equator at around 20 cm per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year. 
This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century. ”
Dr I-Ching Chen said: 



“We have for the first time shown that the amount by which the distributions of species have changed is correlated with the amount the climate has changed in that region.”

I-Ching Chen and her colleagues discovered that moths had on average moved 67 metres uphill on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo.

Comma butterfly. Photo: Butterfly Conservation & Jim Asher

The Comma butterfly has moved 220 kilometres northwards from central England to Edinburgh, in only two decades.

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