Future projections of climate-driven tropical flowering phenology

Quantifying changes in flowering phenology is a well-established method of determining the impact of climate change on an ecosystem, as changes in flowering timing are often the first and most visible indicator of environmental shifts. However, previous assessments of flowering timing have been limited to historical climate records. Here we assess the estimated response of flowering for 19 tropical species to moderate and high future carbon dioxide emissions using ten fully coupled global climate models and demonstrate the utility of this framework for additional taxa. Our calculations reveal robust flowering responses to both moderate and high emissions scenarios, with average projected changes in flowering of roughly one month (absolute change in date) by the end of this century, with significant diversity of this response across taxa.