@article {434,
	title = {A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems},
	journal = {Nature},
	volume = {421},
	year = {2003},
	abstract = {<p>Causal attribution of recent biological trends to climate change is  complicated because non-climatic influences dominate local, short-term  biological changes. Any underlying signal from climate change is likely  to be revealed by analyses that seek systematic trends across diverse  species and geographic regions; however, debates within the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveal several  definitions of a {\textquoteright}systematic trend{\textquoteright}. Here, we explore these differences,  apply diverse analyses to more than 1,700 species, and show that recent  biological trends match climate change predictions. Global  meta-analyses documented significant range shifts averaging 6.1 km per  decade towards the poles (or metres per decade upward), and significant  mean advancement of spring events by 2.3 days per decade. We define a  diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial {\textquoteright}sign-switching{\textquoteright}  responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends. Among  appropriate long-term/large-scale/multi-species data sets, this  diagnostic fingerprint was found for 279 species. This suite of analyses  generates {\textquoteright}very high confidence{\textquoteright} (as laid down by the IPCC) that  climate change is already affecting living systems.</p>},
	keywords = {climate, climate change, evolution, impact, trend},
	author = {C. Parmesan and G. Yohe}
}
