Temperature governs most biotic processes, yet we know little about how warming affects whole ecosystems. Here we examined the responses of 128 components of a subarctic grassland to either 5-8 or >50 years of soil warming. Warming of >50 years drove the ecosystem to a new steady state possessing a distinct biotic composition and reduced species richness, biomass and soil organic matter. However, the warmed state was preceded by an overreaction to warming, which was related to organism physiology and was evident after 5-8 years. Ignoring this overreaction yielded errors of >100% for 83 variables when predicting their responses to a realistic warming scenario of 1 °C over 50 years, although some, including soil carbon content, remained stable after 5-8 years. This study challenges long-term ecosystem predictions made from short-term observations, and provides a framework for characterization of ecosystem responses to sustained climate change.

Agricultural University of Iceland Borgarnes Iceland

Aquatic Ecology Group University of Vic Central University of Catalonia Vic Spain

Climate and Ecosystem Science Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley CA USA

CREAF Cerdanyola del Vallès Spain

CSIC Global Ecology Unit CREAF CSIC UAB Bellaterra Spain

Department of Biology University of Antwerp Wilrijk Belgium

Department of Ecological Sciences Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam the Netherlands

Department of Ecology and Evolution Université de Lausanne Lausanne Switzerland

Department of Ecology University of Innsbruck Innsbruck Austria

Department of Microbiology and Ecosystem Science Division of Terrestrial Ecosystem Research University of Vienna Vienna Austria

Global Change Research Institute Brno Czech Republic

Icelandic Forest Research Mógilsá Reykjavík Iceland

Institute for Integrative Biology ETH Zürich Zürich Switzerland

Institute of Ecology and Bioethics Cardinal St Wyszynski University Warsaw Warsaw Poland

Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences University of Tartu Tartu Estonia

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Ecosystems Services and Management Program Laxenberg Austria

MEMEG Department of Biology Lund University Lund Sweden

Soil Conservation Service of Iceland Gunnarsholti Hella Iceland

Thünen Institute of Climate Smart Agriculture Braunschweig Germany

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