From Colorado's Summit Daily News:

Early warning system set up to detect global warming

MOUNT ALBION - University of Colorado biologists began installing an alarm system atop this craggy summit Friday, near the Continental Divide west of Boulder.

Like the alarm systems in your car or home, this one is designed to detect intruders.

But in this case, the invaders are tundra plants moving up from lower elevations in response to global warming. The alarm system is a cluster of mountaintop vegetation plots that will be monitored periodically for decades to come.

"They might be an early warning, an indicator of how natural systems will respond," said ecologist William Bowman, director of CU's Mountain Research Station at Niwot Ridge, northwest of Nederland.

To spot changes in tundra vegetation caused by warming, permanent monitoring plots are being established this summer atop three peaks within the city of Boulder watershed, along the Continental Divide.

Climate models suggest that by 2100, Colorado could warm 3.6 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, largely due to the buildup of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned.

In some parts of the West, conifer forests are expected to gradually move to higher elevations as the climate warms. But University of Wyoming tree line researcher William Baker said that's unlikely to happen in Colorado, unless the warmth is accompanied by additional moisture.

"Across most of that tree-line area, it's a pretty severe place for them, and they need more moisture to be able to regenerate and really grow, and particularly to move up into the alpine," Baker said.

Tundra plants will likely provide a better climate-warming red flag, Bowman said Friday.

Along the tundra-forest boundary in the Front Range, early indications of a response to warming could include upward migration of shrubs - various willows and blueberry, for example - and nonnative weeds such as dandelions.

The number of tundra species might increase initially, as intruders move into previously inaccessible areas. But as the decades pass, extinction of alpine plants is possible, accompanied by a decline in alpine species, Bowman said.

That decline, in turn, could affect wildlife that rely on tundra plants for sustenance.

My understanding of alarms is that they exist to call you into immediate action when a catastrophic event is occurring or about to occur - you know, a fire, burglary, tornado, air raid, that kind of thing. So what happens when this "alarm" goes off? Does the fire department come and spray the area until it cools down? Do the police rush in and arrest the CO2 molecules responsible for the invasion? Or do they just give the intruding tundra plants a warning and tell them to leave the area immediately? Does Al Gore come and do a PowerPoint presentation on global warming until the plants get bored and either leave or die? I would really like to know.