A planet in change. As global temperatures climb higher than ever recorded, wildlife populations are plummeting. This interactive data story visualises how a warming world reshapes life on Earth: from shrinking mammal habitats to the sharp decline in global biodiversity.
This map visualises the combined marine and terrestrial ranges of mammals using the Equirectangular projection, which preserves area for fair spatial comparison. It grounds the climate-and-biodiversity narrative in place: where species live, migrate and overlap with human activity. Seeing the spatial footprint of mammals helps explain why warming oceans, shifting coastlines, and habitat fragmentation directly translate into population declines shown later.
This chart tracks how Earth’s average land–ocean temperature has shifted since 1850, showing yearly fluctuations and a smoothed trend. The single slider lets you explore how the climate evolved through industrialisation, the post-war boom and the recent acceleration. The continuous rise above the 0 °C baseline and the approach toward the 1.5 °C Paris threshold illustrate the rapid pace of anthropogenic warming. Even small average increases amplify extremes that stress ecosystems and erode habitat quality.
Each bar summarises a decade’s average anomaly. A scale centred at 0 makes the regime shift obvious: mostly cooler decades before mid-century, then persistent warming from the 1980s onward. Warmer baselines raise the floor for heatwaves and marine heat spikes, compounding habitat stress and pushing ecosystems beyond recovery windows.
The Living Planet Index (LPI) tracks vertebrate population abundance worldwide, normalised to 1970. Using the single slider to adjust the start year reveals a sustained decline since the 1970s, evidence that average population levels are far below baseline. Read together with rising temperature anomalies, this points to a climate system that increasingly drives habitat loss, fragmentation and lower ecological resilience.
Each cell shows the Living Planet Index (1970 = 100) for a region in a given year. Persistent red tones across multiple regions highlight widespread biodiversity decline. As populations shrink, habitats lose key functions: pollination, soil renewal and carbon storage; creating feedbacks that further weaken ecosystems.
Taken together, these visualisations tell a consistent story. Global temperatures have shifted into a sustained warm regime, with recent decades well above the long-term average. Over the same period, the Living Planet Index shows a broad, persistent decline in vertebrate populations. Warmer baselines amplify extremes (heatwaves, droughts and marine heat events), while land-use change and fragmentation reduce habitat quality and the capacity of ecosystems to recover between shocks. The outcome is fewer animals in fewer places, and habitats that perform fewer ecological services.
The implication is clear: climate mitigation (rapid emissions reduction) and adaptation (protecting and restoring connected habitats) are complementary. Slowing the rise in anomalies reduces the frequency of damaging extremes, while safeguarding corridors and high-value ecosystems helps populations persist. Data-driven policy that links climate targets with biodiversity protection offers the strongest path to stabilising both the climate and the habitats life depends on.