Global effects of Climate Change
Sources Used
Loss of Ice
Severe Weather Patterns
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Food and Water
Water scarcity
Food scarcity
Around half the world's population experiences water scarcity. This is increasingly due to climate change.
Over the last 50 years, climate change has negatively impacted crop yields in mid and low latutude regions.
Hot extremes like heatwaves have become more intense, in cities this means limiting functioning of key infrastructure like transportation, water, sanitation, and energy. The most impacted groups are those who are economically and socially marginalized.
At 1.5°C global warming, heavy precipitation and flooding events increase in Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe. At 2°C or more, these changes intensify globally, plus more frequent and severe agricultural and ecological droughts in Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, and the Americas. Additional impacts include heightened tropical cyclones, increased aridity, fire weather, and more frequent heatwaves and droughts.
Ocean warming in the 20th century and beyond has contributed to an overall decrease in maximum catch potential, compounding the impacts from overfishing for some fish stocks. This warming, along with ocean acidification, has negatively affected food production from shellfish aquaculture and fisheries in some oceanic regions.
The frost-free season has expanded since the 1980s, especially in North America. It is projected that this will continue, impacting ecosystems and agriculture. If current greenhouse gas emissions persist.
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More than one sixth of the world population lives in zones where water is mainly supplied from melting ice in mountain ranges. Those stores of freshwater have and will continue to decline. This will reduce water availability.
Sea-level rise is projected to extend salinization of groundwater. This will decrease freshwater availability for both people and ecosystems in coastal areas.
Climate change will cause more frequent floods and droughts, as well as higher water temperatures. This will increase the number of sediments, pathogens, and pesticides in the water.
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Climate change, population growth and increasing water scarcity will put pressure on food supply because about 70 per cent on average of freshwater humans use is used for agriculture.
Biosphere
Around 150 Billion tons of ice from Antarctica is melting every year, and Greenland is losing around 270 billion. This vastly contributes to sea level rise across the whole world.
Those ice sheets carry a combined one third of all the earth's freshwater, and their melting is responsible for one third of sea level rise since 1993.
Antarctica Ice Mass Variation
Greenland Ice Mass Variation
Plants
Other Life
As the summers get longer and hotter, plants like trees and grasses begin to get drier. Since snow is meltine earlier, the season with less rain has even fewer sources of water. The fire season in the Western United States now lasts seven months instead of five months. The fire season globally was 19% longer in 2013 than in 1979.
This photo was taken in Yellowstone park in 2013. That particular wildfire was started by a lightning strike
Climate change doesn't just help fires by making drier conditions.. For every one degree Celsius temperature increase, the United States will get 12% more lightning strikes.
This creates a negative feedback loop because the carbon emissions from forest fires contributes to warming climates.
This is a golden toad, which went extinct in 1989. It's extinction was directly caused by climate change, like many other species
Climate change also causes species to need to move to cooler areas. Whether that be land species moving to higher elevation and towards the poles, or water species moving to areas with cooler water, like in the diagram below.
Rising water temperatures are causing problems for coral reefs through a process known as ocean acidification. As carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, some dissolves into the oceans, making them more acidic. Acidification contributes to coral bleaching, where corals lose their vibrant colours and can result in the permanent death of entire reef ecosystems. The great barrier reef has experienced bleaching events that affected 50-60% of the reef and lead to the loss of around 5% of it.