Global warming has started to affect plant and animal life across the planet, a scientific survey says.
Some species are doomed as they battle ever-rising temperatures in an increasingly crowded planet that offers fewer escape routes, according to scientists writing in the journal Nature.
The world's mean temperature rise is already being felt by flora and fauna from the equator to the poles. Most of the rise came in the last 30 years.
"Temperature has increased by no more than 0.6 degrees and already the signs are very obvious," said geobotanist Mr Gian-Reto Walther from the University of Hanover in Germany.
The study's conclusions highlight the seriousness of global climate change by showing parallel trends in plants, birds, animals and fish.
"This is a major concern," Mr Walther said. He said extinction for some species was inevitable. "The big difference between now and previous periods of climate change, like the Ice Age, is that seven billion people live on Earth now and many migration corridors for species are blocked".
Among the findings were that mosses have appeared in areas of the Antarctic previously considered too cold, mosquito-born diseases are spreading over a wider range and ocean circulation changes have affected the breeding ground of krill.
One of the most dramatic barometers of climate change has been the world's coral reefs, which have been devastated by 'coral bleaching' - a direct result of warmer ocean water. In 1998, an estimated 16 per cent of the world's reef-building coral died, the Naturereport.
In Europe, trees are starting to show their autumn colour between 0.3 and 1.6 days later per decade, and some migrating birds are changing their migration patterns.
Britain's Met Office predicts global temperatures will rise between 1.4 degrees Celsius and nearly six degrees over the next century, depending on the success of policies against greenhouse gases.