Interannual variability (IAV) in net ecosystem exchange of carbon (NEE) is a critical factor in projections of future ecosystem changes. However, our understanding of IAV is limited because of the difficulty in isolating its numerous causes. We proposed that IAV in NEE is primarily caused by climatic variability, through its direct effects on photosynthesis and respiration and through its indir...

Geological and climatic processes potentially alter speciation rates by generating and modifying barriers to dispersal. In Southeast Asia, two processes have substantially altered the distribution of land. Volcanic uplift produced many new islands during the Miocene-Pliocene and repeated sea level fluctuations during the Pleistocene resulted in intermittent land connections among islands. Each ...

The climatic variability hypothesis posits that the magnitude of climatic variability increases with latitude, elevation, or both, and that greater variability selects for organisms with broader temperature tolerances, enabling them to be geographically widespread. We tested this classical hypothesis for the elevational range sizes of more than 16,500 terrestrial vertebrates on 180 montane grad...

Soil moisture influences and is influenced by water, climate, and ecosystem conditions, affecting associated ecosystem services in the landscape. This paper couples snow storage-melting dynamics with an analytical modeling approach to screening basin-scale, long-term soil moisture variability and change in a changing climate. This coupling enables assessment of both spatial differences and temp...

Farmers in semi-arid Zimbabwe prioritise climate variability as their major agricultural productivity-reducing problem. This paper raises the importance of considering local farmers’ perceptions on climate risk, as this greatly influences on-farm investments and decision-making in agricultural management and production in semiarid Zimbabwe. A study was conducted in two districts of semi-arid Zi...

Alaskan salmon stocks have exhibited enormous fluctuations in production during the 20th century. In this paper, we investigate our hypothesis that large-scale salmon-production variability is driven by climatic processes in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. Using a time-series analytical technique known as intervention analysis, we demonstrate that Alaskan salmonids alternate between high and low p...

The role of global climate change in the decline of biodiversity and the emergence of infectious diseases remains controversial, and the effect of climatic variability, in particular, has largely been ignored. For instance, it was recently revealed that the proposed link between climate change and widespread amphibian declines, putatively caused by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobati...

Aim Climatic niche breadth (the range of climatic conditions that a species experiences over space and time) is a fundamental topic in ecology, biogeography and evolution. But what determines the climatic niche width of species? In 1967, Janzen suggested that climatic niche widths for temperature were determined by levels of seasonal fluctuation in temperature at each locality, such that niche ...

The greater latitudinal extents of occurrence of species towards higher latitudes has been attributed to the broadening of physiological tolerances with latitude as a result of increases in climatic variation. While there is some support for such patterns in climate, the physiological tolerances of species across large latitudinal gradients have seldom been assessed. Here we report findings for...