Global warming is relatively fast in the mountains. As a result, plant species richness is increasing on mountain peaks. For plant species that previously occurred lower down on the mountains, the climate is now also suitable higher up in the mountains. This may seem good news, but it is not. This is only one side of the coin. The flip side of the coin is the loss of species for which the climate has become too warm. The greening of the mountain peaks is accompanied by the loss of the plants that were originally native to those areas.

This was concluded from a series of four surveys – conducted in the years 2001, 2008, 2015 and 2022 – of almost 900 vegetation plots across 62 European mountain summits. Over the past 21 years, above the treeline, local extinction of plant species has increased. Experts call this the ‘escalator to extinction’: global warming is forcing plant species to move to higher altitudes in the mountains, until they have nowhere to go and become extinct.

Source: Wessely et al., 2026. Science 393 (6815): 1021-1026.