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Differentiating the impacts of climate change between 1.5°C and 2°C requires a regional and sector-specific perspective. Whereas for some regions and sectors the difference in climate variables might be indistinguishable from natural variability, other areas especially in the tropics and subtropics will experience significant shifts. In addition to region-specific changes in climatic conditions, vulnerability and exposure also differ substantially across the world. Even small differences in climate hazards can translate into sizeable impact differences for particularly vulnerable regions or sectors. Here, we review scientific evidence of regional differences in climate hazards at 1.5°C and 2°C and provide an assessment of selected hotspots of climate change, including small islands as well as rural, urban, and coastal areas in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, that are particularly affected by the additional 0.5°C global mean temperature increase. We interlink these with a review of the vulnerability and exposure literature related to these hotspots to provide an integrated perspective on the differences in climate impacts between 1.5°C and 2°C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing climates are affecting biodiversity and natural systems, causing extinctions, range shifts, and phenological shifts. Efforts to forecast the spatial distribution and magnitude of these effects, however, have focused largely on direct effects of changing climates on species' distributional potential; recent work has considered secondary effects of warming climates via rising sea levels. Here, we present a first integration of the two dimensions of climate change effects on biodiversity, examining joint effects of marine intrusion and climate change on the distributional potential of seventy-six species of Mexican birds. The two phenomena are not related to one another—that is, a species seriously affected by one is not necessarily seriously affected by the other; however, the areas affected within species' distributions by the two phenomena tend to be complementary, compounding the negative effects. These results have implications for planning biodiversity conservation globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]