A Changing World: Scientists Study How Heat Is Making Nature Look Different

Heatwaves have been breaking records around the world for months, and scientists are worried — not just about people, but about nature itself. Extreme heat is changing forests, rivers, and soils in ways that look very different from anything we have seen before. Researchers call these big changes 'ecological novelty,' which means that nature is moving into new states it has never been in before. A new review published in the journal Nature Climate Change explores what these changes mean and how people might respond to them.

The UK Met Office, which tracks weather in Britain, summed up the situation in a striking way. Scientists there said, 'What we used to think of as extreme, we increasingly consider as normal.' That means temperatures that once seemed shocking are now happening so often that people are starting to treat them as ordinary. This shift is a major warning sign for scientists who study the climate.

Heatwaves are not hitting everyone equally. A study by Liu and colleagues found that the number of extremely hot hours is growing, and poorer and more vulnerable communities are feeling the heat more than others. Two separate expert commentaries in the same journal issue called for action to protect people's health and well-being. Scientists stress that any plan to help people adapt to heat must be fair and must not push problems onto the people who are least able to deal with them.

The effects of heat go far beyond humans. Satellite photos have shown dry, cracked soil and brown, dead grass across wide areas. In some rivers, water levels have dropped so low that old sunken ships have appeared from the riverbed. Forests in the Pacific Northwest of the United States turned brown on a massive scale after an extreme heat dome in 2021, which scientists say is very different from the normal browning of leaves in autumn.

A recent scientific study found that about 58 percent of land on Earth is now experiencing high levels of ecological novelty. That means more than half the land on our planet has ecosystems that look or work differently than they did in the past. Scientists say these changes are being caused by climate change, which is shifting where plants and animals can live. Some species are moving into new places, and that can have good or bad results depending on the situation.

The review article by Wright and colleagues explains that ecological novelty is not always a bad thing. A species moving into a new area might help that ecosystem in some ways, even if it also causes some problems — similar to how an invasive species can shake things up. The scientists argue that we need to be open to uncertainty and keep learning as nature changes. They also say we must think about how these changes affect people's cultures, beliefs, and ways of life, not just the plants and animals themselves.

Scientists in Australia are now breeding corals that can survive warmer water and planting them in the Great Barrier Reef to help it cope with rising temperatures. Planting more trees in cities to create shade also moves resources like land and water in new ways. These solutions are helpful, but they also change ecosystems in ways we need to watch carefully. Even our efforts to fight climate change create new kinds of novelty that scientists must study.

Scientists say we can no longer always try to bring nature back to exactly the way it used to be. As the climate keeps changing, some of those old states may simply not be possible to restore. Instead, experts say we need to understand both the good and bad sides of novelty and build systems that can handle surprises. Learning to live with a changing nature — and helping the most vulnerable people do so fairly — is one of the most important challenges of our time.