由于化石燃料燃烧和森林砍伐等人类活动引起的地球大气层中温室气体(主要是二氧化碳)的富集已导致全球平均温度在20世纪升高了0.6 ℃,并将在本世纪继续上升1.4～5 .8℃。这种地质历史上前所未有的全球变暖将对陆地植物和生态系统产生深远影响，并通过全球碳循环的改变反馈于全球气候变化。作为全球变化生态学的主要研究方法之一，生态系统增温实验能够为生态模型提供参数估计和模型验证。然而由于在世界各地使用的增温装置不同，使得各个生态系统之间的结果比较和整合难以实施，增加了模型预测的不确定性。该文通过比较几种常见的野外增温装置在模拟全球变暖情形时的优缺点，指出利用不同增温装置进行全球变暖研究中应注意的一些问题；同时探讨了全球变暖控制实验研究中的一些关键性的科学问题。
Enrichment of atmospheric greenhouse gases resulted from human activities such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation has increased global mean
temperature by 0.6 ℃ in the 20th century and is predicted to increase it by 1.4-5.8℃ in this century. The unprecedented global warming will have profound long-term impacts on terrestrial plants and ecosystems. Responses of terrestrial plants and ecosystems to global warming may feed back to climate change via ecosystem and global carbon cycling. As one of the major methodology in global change research, ecosystem warming studies can facilitate model projections on potential changes in terrestrial biomes in terms of parameterization and validation. The difficulty in comparing and integrating the results from various ecosystems manipulate d with different warming facilities exacerbated the uncertainties of model prediction. In this paper, field facilities in simulating climate warming and their potential applications in different terrestrial biomes were discussed. Critical scientific questions that could be addressed by ecosystem warming studies were proposed.