Effect Of Climate Change On The Environment – The effects of anthropogenic global warming are happening now, are irreversible for humans living today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
The potential future effects of global change include more frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought in some regions, and an increase in wind intensity and rainfall from tropical cyclones. Credit: Left – Mike McMillan/USFS, Center – Tomas Castelazo / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0, Right – NASA.
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Effect Of Climate Change On The Environment
Global change is not a future problem. Changes to the Earth driven by increased human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are already having widespread effects on the environment: glaciers and ice caps are shrinking, river and lake ice are breaking up earlier, the geographic ranges of plants and animals are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming faster.
Common Adverse Impacts Of Climate Change On The Environment
Effects that scientists had long predicted would result from global change are now occurring, such as loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves.
“The magnitude and speed of changes and associated risks depend strongly on short-term mitigation and adaptation measures, and the expected negative impacts and related losses and damages escalate with each increase in global warming.” – Intergovernmental Panel on Change
Some changes (such as droughts, wildfires and extreme rainfall) are happening faster than scientists have previously estimated. In fact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Change (IPCC) – the UN body created to assess the science related to change – modern humans have never before seen the observed changes in our global , and some of these changes are irreversible during the next hundreds to thousands of years.
Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for many decades, primarily due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities.
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So the Earth’s average temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century. What’s the big deal?
The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, published in 2021, found that human emissions of heat-trapping gases have already warmed by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since 1850-1900.
The global average temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5 degrees C (about 3 degrees F) within the next few decades. These changes will affect all areas of the Earth.
“Global warming” refers to the long-term warming of the planet. “change” includes global warming but refers to the wider range of changes occurring on our planet, including rising sea levels; shrinking mountain glaciers; accelerating ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic; and shifts in flowering/plant blooming times.
Majority Of Us Adults Believe Climate Change Is Most Important Issue Today
The severity of impacts caused by change will depend on future human activities. More greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more extremes and widespread damage across our planet. However, these future effects depend on the total amount of carbon dioxide we emit. So if we can reduce emissions, we can avoid some of the worst effects.
“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: Change is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss the short, rapidly closing window to secure a vibrant future.”2 – Intergovernmental Panel on Change Futures Effects in USA
Change brings different types of challenges to each region of the country. Some of the current and future impacts are summarized below. These results are from the third
Humans have already made great changes happen, and we have set more changes in motion. But if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the increase in global temperatures would begin to level off within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau, but remain highly elevated for many, many centuries.
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The International Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission is able to measure ocean features, like El Niño, closer to a coastline than previous space-based missions.
The instrument will enable the nonprofit organization Carbon Mapper to locate and measure methane and carbon dioxide sources from space.
The summer of 2023 was Earth’s hottest since global records began in 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
No stranger to hot weather, the region is facing more humid heat waves that are testing residents’ adaptability. But different areas have different effects.
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According to researchers at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, July 2023 was warmer than any other month in the global temperature record.
If global temperatures reach 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, people worldwide may face multiple impacts of change simultaneously.
In June 2023, a South American reservoir reached critically low levels due to an ongoing drought and human use. Click through for the view from the room.
A lot of hard work goes into ensuring that a spacecraft like the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite delivers accurate data.
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NASA management, including experts, will be available at 4 p.m. EDT Thursday, July 20, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington to shed light on recent extreme weather events and discuss how NASA research and data are enabling solutions.
Independent analyzes by the EU’s Copernicus Change Service and NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information also found June 2023 to be the warmest June on record.
Built on opposite sides of the planet, the NISAR satellite will deepen understanding of climate change, deforestation, glacier melt, volcanoes, earthquakes and more. Emissions of several important greenhouse gases resulting from human activity have increased significantly since major industrialization began in the mid-1800s. Most of these man-made (anthropogenic) greenhouse gas emissions were carbon dioxide (CO)
. The flux or movement of carbon between the atmosphere and the Earth’s land and oceans is dominated by natural processes such as plant photosynthesis. Although these natural processes can absorb some of the anthropogenic CO
Climate Change Adaptation
This imbalance between greenhouse gas emissions and the ability of natural processes to absorb these emissions has resulted in a continued increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Concentrations of CO
Scientists know with practical certainty that rising greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet. In computer-based models, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases cause an increase in the Earth’s average surface temperature over time. Rising temperatures can cause changes in precipitation patterns, storm severity, and sea levels. Together, this is commonly called
Assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that the Earth’s climate warmed 0.92 degrees Celsius (1.66 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1880 and 2012
And that human activity affecting the atmosphere is likely to be an important driving factor. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (Chapter 3: Human Influences on the Climate System) states: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land since pre-industrial times.”
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In 2020, fossil fuels were the source of about 79% of US primary energy consumption, 94% of total US carbon dioxide emissions, and 80% of total US greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.
The report later says: “The likely range of anthropogenic warming in global mean surface air temperature in 2010-2019 relative to 1850-1900 is 0.8°C-1.3°C.” The report also states: “The current rates of increase in the concentration of the major greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) are unprecedented over at least the last 800,000 years. Multiple lines of evidence clearly show that these increases are the results of human activities.”
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, November 2022, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2020, April 2022. Although we often think of anthropogenic climate change as something that will happen in the future, it is an ongoing process. Ecosystems and communities in the United States and around the world are being affected today.
A collage of typical climate and weather-related events: floods, heat waves, droughts, hurricanes, forest fires and loss of glacier ice. (Image credit:)
The Missing Risks Of Climate Change
Global temperatures rose about 1.98°F offsite link (1.1°C) from 1901 to 2020, but climate change refers to more than an increase in temperature. It also includes sea level rise, changes in weather patterns such as droughts and floods, and more. Things we depend on and value—water, energy, transportation, wildlife, agriculture, ecosystems, and human health—are experiencing the effects of a changing climate.
The effects of climate change on different sectors of society are interconnected. Drought can harm food production and human health. Flooding can lead to the spread of disease and damage to ecosystems and infrastructure. Human health problems can increase mortality, affect food availability, and limit worker productivity. The impacts of climate change are seen in every aspect of the world we live in. However, the impacts of climate change are uneven across the country and the world – even within a single community, the impacts of climate change can vary between neighborhoods or individuals. Long-standing socioeconomic inequalities can make underserved groups, who often have the highest exposure to hazards and the fewest resources to respond, more vulnerable.
The projections of a climate-affected future are not inevitable. Many of the problems and solutions offsite link are known to us now, and ongoing research continues to provide new ones. Experts believe that there is still time to avoid the most negative outcomes by limiting warming offsite link and reducing emissions to zero as
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