Impacts of global climate change on terrestrial ecosystems are imperfectly constrained by ecosystem models and direct observations. Pervasive ecosystem transformations occurred in response to warming and associated climatic changes during the last glacial-to-interglacial transition, which was comparable in magnitude to warming projected for the next century under high-emission scenarios. We reviewed 594 published paleoecological records to examine compositional and structural changes in terrestrial vegetation since the last glacial period and to project the magnitudes of ecosystem transformations under alternative future emission scenarios. Our results indicate that terrestrial ecosystems are highly sensitive to temperature change and suggest that, without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are at risk of major transformation, with accompanying disruption of ecosystem services and impacts on biodiversity.

[1] Recent studies indicated that the spatial pattern and temporal variability of summer rainfall over eastern China are well correlated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Here we used a data set of the drought/flood index (a proxy of summer rainfall) since 1470 AD to reconstruct the annual PDO index. The reconstruction indicates that the PDO is a robust feature of North Pacific climate variability throughout the study period, however, the major modes of oscillation providing the basic PDO regime timescale have not been persistent over the last 530 years. The quasi-centennial (75 -115-yr) and pentadecadal (50 -70-yr) oscillations dominated the periods before and after 1850, respectively. Our analysis suggest that solar forcing fluctuation on quasi-centennial time scale (Gleissberg cycle) could be the pace-maker of the PDO before 1850, and the PDO behavior after 1850 could be due, in part, to the global warming.

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Climate extremes, particularly the droughts sustaining over a prolonged period and affecting extended area (defined as "exceptional drought events"), can have longlasting effects on economic and social activities. Here we use the Chinese drought/flood proxy data of the past five hundred years to identify the cases of exceptional drought events over eastern China (east of 105°E), and to study their spatial patterns and temporal evolutions. The associated circulations for the contemporary case are analyzed using available meteorological data. Possible linkage of these cases to climatic forcing and natural climate events is also explored. After considering the intensity, duration, and spatial coverage, we identified three exceptional drought events, which occurred in 1586-1589, 1638-1641, and 1965-1966 in chronological order. They were the most severe droughts of last five centuries in eastern China, with more than 40% of affected area and the drought center encountered a significant summer rainfall reduction (about 50% or more). These three droughts all developed first in North China (34-40°N), and then either expanded southward or moved to the Yangtze River Valley (27-34°N) and the northern part of the southeastern coastal area (22-27°N). For the 1965-1966 case, the significant reduction of summer precipitation was caused by a weakening of summer monsoon and an anomalous westward and northward displacement of the western Pacific subtropical high. Our analyses also suggest that these three exceptional drought events might be triggered by large volcanic eruptions and amplified by both volcanic eruptions and El Niño events.