They hung electrical heaters across patches of a flowery grass meadow up in the Rockies and raised the air and top soil temperature by 2C.

[anlomedad@fedifreu.de]

They hung electrical heaters across patches of a flowery grass meadow up in the Rockies and raised the air and top soil temperature by 2C.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/25/flowers-heated-2c-meadow-climate-crisis-experiment-rocky-mountains-aoe
Then they paid 6000$ per year on electricity and waited for 29 years to see how the heated patches might change compared to their surrounding.

The soil changed its composition of fungi and microbes, and became 20% drier. The plants changed to more shrubs.

I'd like to know a few more things. Like, nothing else was changed but temperature? So not more moisture in the air, not more rain, and in changed patterns.
Then the experiment's outcome isn't a blueprint for what's in store for the rest of that meadow.
Also: the shrub-ification is a bit odd. Did grazing wildlife avoid the warmed patches because of, maybe, the electrical humming?
I assume, these questions get addressed in the text but the paper is paywalled. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2510936123

#Climate #Ecology