James Balog did a wonderful job to document what is happening on the ice fields at high latitudes and high altitudes. You haven't watch that movie yet? Then, you have to watch it. If you are not yet convinced about that, well, have a look at the stunning and mind-boggling movie Chasing Ice. Ok, now why the race? As temperature rises globally, the limit of sea ice and glaciers is retreating poleward and upward. In 1817 in Paris, Alexander von Humboldt published the first isotherm map, sowing the seed of current climate mapping and species distribution modelling.Įxemple of a modern world map of isotherms based on global mean sea-level temperatures (☌) in January. Although it sounds obvious to us right now, it was Alexander von Humboldt’s intuition that the geographical distribution of temperatures on the planet is deeply connected with the geographical distribution of life on Earth. It is because of his work and research on the geographical distribution of plants that Alexander von Humboldt had this great idea to draw curves of equal mean annual temperature over the globe. The father of temperature mapping, who is none other than Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), was the first to introduce this concept to describe the invisible line that connects points on a map which receive an equal quantity of heat. I assume most of you know what is an isotherm, but it does not hurt to refresh our minds about the meaning and history of this word from Ancient Greek – ἴσος – the same – θέρμη – heat. Before presenting BioShifts and its companion research paper freshly published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, let’s take a minute to clarify what I mean by “the isotherms race”.
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