Background: Protected areas (PAs) are aimed to hold the environmental conditions that facilitate species and ecosystems to persist. PAs can become climatically unsuitable and unable to sustain their current number of species under climate change. The Natura 2000 (N2K) is the largest coordinated conservation tool assigned to maintain the long-term survival of Europe's most significant species and habitats. In attempting to understand the effectiveness of PAs in the face of climate change scenarios, we tested two hypotheses: (1) PAs in the Alpine and the Boreal biogeographical regions will experience more newly emerged climate conditions (hotter and drier) compared to the climate representation of other biogeographical regions under future climate in Europe and (2) PAs in the Mediterranean and the Continental biogeographical regions will face more consistency in climate conditions due to less area of disappearing and novel climate in future. Methods: Current climate data (1960-1990) and projections for 2050 and 2070 of PAs of N2K were extracted from WorldClim global climate data. Principal components analysis (PCA) was performed to construct climate space for the PAs across the biogeographical regions based on 19 climatic variables assessed at 5-km resolution. ArcMap 10.1 was used to map the location of the novel and disappearing climates. Results: PAs in the Alpine region will experience more novel climate conditions in the future compared to other biogeographical regions. The future projections showed that 17.70% of the PAs in the Alpine region will experience novel climate by 2070. Considerable climate consistency was observed in the PAs in the Continental region compared to the other biogeographical regions. Our results showed that about 176 km 2 of the selected PAs in the Continental region will face new emerging climate, while about 110 km 2 will disappear under RCP 8.5 scenario. The prediction also revealed that in the Mediterranean region 08 PAs will experience novel climate and 786 km 2 areas in these PAs will face disappearing climate by 2070. We found that fewer areas of PAs in the Boreal regions will experience disappearing climate in both the scenarios. Conclusions: The portion of novel climate conditions can be seen as a future opportunity to assign new reserves for the species. Our study highlights the importance of conservation planning to increase the connectivity between PAs, identifying novel conservation zones to maximize representation of habitats during the emerging climatic changes as well as designing strategies, management, and monitoring of the individual PAs.

Increasing frequency and intensity of climate extremes have profound impacts on grassland biodiversity functioning and stability. Using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) net primary productivity (NPP) data and standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index, we assessed the response of NPP to growingseason and annual climate extremes and time-lag of climatic conditions across four grassland types (meadow steppe, typical steppe, steppe desert, and desert steppe) in Inner Mongolia, China from the period 2000 to 2019. Results showed that annual NPP varied significantly across four grassland types, with the highest NPP in meadow steppe and the lowest in desert steppe. Annual NPP of all grassland types increased over the past 20 years, but NPP in meadow steppe and typical steppe decreased for the period 2012-2019. Irrespective of grassland type, the 1-and 2-month timelag of climatic conditions showed significant effects on annual NPP. Growing-season climate was found the better predictor of annual NPP in all grassland types than the annual climate. Compared with growing-season normal climates, annual NPP was lowest in extreme dry events in all grasslands, while highest in extreme wet events in meadow steppe and typical steppe, and in moderate wet events in steppe desert and desert steppe. Typical steppe and steppe desert are highly vulnerable to the increasing intensity of climate extremes, as we found that the losses of NPP in these grasslands in extreme dry were almost double than that of moderate dry events. Surprisingly, for meadow steppe and desert steppe, the losses of NPP for both moderate and extreme dry events were almost the same, which highlights that a lowintensity drought may have profound impacts on the annual NPP of these grasslands.The study provides the key insight in scientific basis to improve our understanding of the effects of climate extremes on grassland NPP, which is critical to sustainable management of grassland and maintain ecosystem stability.

In the original publication of this article (Nila and Hossain 2019), co-authors 'Carl Beierkuhnlein, Anja Jaeschke and Samuel Hoffmann' need to be added to the author list. Additionally, two parts of the Declarations section below need to be updated: