Bumblebees are disappearing at rates "consistent with a mass extinction" thanks largely to climate change, according to a new study in Canada.

Key points: University of Ottawa researchers looked at data from bumblebees over a 115-year period

University of Ottawa researchers looked at data from bumblebees over a 115-year period Bumblebees' chances of survival have declined by 30 per cent in a generation

Bumblebees' chances of survival have declined by 30 per cent in a generation The research centred on increased frequency of heatwaves, droughts and other extreme events

Researchers at the University of Ottawa say they have developed a technique for predicting the impact of climate change on species' extinction risk, with bees at the forefront of their research.

The study linked "climate chaos" to extinctions and one author said the world was in the thick of its sixth mass extinction event — the biggest since the dinosaurs.

"We've known for a while that climate change is related to the growing extinction risk that animals are facing around the world," author Peter Soroye said.

"In this paper, we offer an answer to the critical questions of how and why that is. We find that species extinctions across two continents [North America and Europe] are caused by hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures."

The study found that the likelihood of bumblebees surviving in any given place has declined by 30 per cent over the course of a human generation.

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The importance of bees as the world's best pollinators is well-known, particularly for widely used crops like "like tomato, squash, and berries", and major declines would lead to less biodiversity.

Increased frequency of heatwaves, droughts and other extreme events caused by climate change were at the centre of the research, with observed on 66 bumblebee species over 115 years, from 1900 to 2015.

"We found that populations were disappearing in areas where the temperatures had gotten hotter," Mr Soroye said.

"Using our new measurement of climate change, we were able to predict changes both for individual species and for whole communities of bumblebees with a surprisingly high accuracy."

The hope is that the research can be applied to any number of different animal species to predict extinction trends.

"Predicting why bumblebees and other species are going extinct in a time of rapid, human-caused climate change could help us prevent extinction in the 21st century," co-author, Jeremy Kerr, said.

Mr Soroye warned, "if declines continue at this pace, many of these species could vanish forever within a few decades".