Study Finds "Extreme" Climate Change in National Parks
Global warming threatens visitor experience and national treasures, scientists say.
"This report shows that climate change continues to be the most far-reaching and consequential challenge ever faced by our national parks," National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said in a statement.
For the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One Wednesday, National Park Service scientists studied weather records from 289 U.S. parks for the years 1901 to 2012. They then compared the historical trends for that period with the trends over the past few decades.
The results show that "many of our parks have been changing in extreme and dramatic ways over the past 10 to 30 years," says study lead author Bill Monahan, a parks service scientist based in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The study authors wrote that "parks
