A study led by NCAR postdoctoral researcher Jia Hu and Julia Klein from Colorado State University looks at the relationship between plants, water, carbon, and climate on the Tibetan Plateau, which is warming at a rate twice that of the global average.

When climate change leaped into global consciousness more than 20 years ago, there was no doubt that sea levels would rise, but the main worry was how those rising seas would affect civilization, not on how the oceans themselves might be transformed.