ABSTRACT Climate diversity significantly influences biodiversity by shaping climatic niches and buffering against climate fluctuations and represents a key indicator of biodiversity conservation values. Protecting climate diversity within protected areas (PAs) enhances the resilience to future climate change of PAs. However, the conservation status of global climate diversity remains unknown. Here, we quantitatively assessed the spatially continuous distribution of global climate diversity and identified key areas for climate diversity (KAs) as the top 30% of values, consistent with the Target of Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. We found that only 10.26% of these KAs are protected globally. These KAs exhibit considerable overlap with global mountainous regions, with conservation coverage varying widely (1.35%–49.32%). Among biomes, tropical moist forests within KAs show the highest climate diversity and the largest area proportion, yet only 9.64% are protected. In contrast, tropical coniferous forests have the lowest protection (4.07%). Notably, mountainous developing countries, despite harboring high climate diversity, have limited conservation capacity and significant conservation gaps. Our results characterize the global conservation status of KAs, providing a novel perspective for formulating targeted strategies to strengthen global PA networks.
Wáng et al. (Sun,) studied this question.