According to new tree data, the commonly used climate theory is incorrect

New data on more than 1,500 trees at nearly 1,000 locations shows that an existing theory about how individuals within a species will respond to a changing climate may not be true.

The data, in the form of tree rings from a barren pine, contradicts the assumptions underlying climate prediction, which uses the range of climate conditions or ‘envelope’ under which a species can live to predict how it will respond to climate change.

Looking at temperature, it is predicted that individuals of a species in the coolest region – known as the ‘leading edge’ – will benefit from warming, while those in the warmer region or the ‘trailing edge’ will suffer. If this is true, species’ geographic distributions could follow changing climate.

Research has been published when examining the tree ring data Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and conducted by Margaret Evans and her team at the University of Arizona – found that the trailing edge encompasses the entire geographic distribution of the common piñon, a tree endemic to the Colorado Plateau.

Instead of half the distribution benefiting from warming, all trees in all sampled locations are suffering from warming. Without evolutionary change in climate tolerances on an individual scale, the common piñon faces extinction as the climate warms.

Evans shares co-first authorship on the paper with a former postdoctoral researcher in her lab, Kelly Heilman, and Sharmila Dey, who first came to the lab as a volunteer in high school and is now a student at Harvard University.