Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.
Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea-level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves.
Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come, largely due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes more than 1,300 scientists from the United States and other countries, forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.
What Is Climate Change?
Climate change is generally defined as a significant variation of average weather conditions—say, conditions becoming warmer, wetter, or drier—over several decades or more. It’s the longer-term trend that differentiates climate change from natural weather variability.
What are the effects of global warming?
Global warming, the gradual heating of Earth’s surface, oceans, and atmosphere, is caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels that pump carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
One of the most immediate and obvious consequences of global warming is the increase in temperatures around the world. The average global temperature has increased by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) over the past 100 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Since record-keeping began in 1895, the hottest year on record worldwide was 2016, according to NOAA and NASA data. That year Earth’s surface temperature was 1.78 degrees F (0.99 degrees C) warmer than the average across the entire 20th century.
Before 2016, 2015 was the warmest year on record, globally. And before 2015? Yep, 2014. In fact, all 10 of the warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, which tied with 2013 as the 10th-warmest year on record, according to NOAA’s Global Climate Report 2021.
Rounding out the top 6 hottest years on record across the globe are (in order of hottest to not as hot): 2020, 2019, 2015, 2017, and 2021.
Greenhouse gas concentrations are at their highest levels in 2 million years
And emissions continue to rise. As a result, the Earth is now about 1.1°C warmer than it was in the late 1800s. The last decade (2011-2020) was the warmest on record.
Many people think climate change mainly means warmer temperatures. But temperature rise is only the beginning of the story. Because the Earth is a system, where everything is connected, changes in one area can influence changes in all others.
The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms, and declining biodiversity.
Climate change – the biggest health threat facing humanity
Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C.
Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.
HOW FORESTS ARE AFFECTED BY CLIMATE CHANGE
Impacts vary in different kinds of forests. Sub-Arctic boreal forests are likely to be particularly badly affected, with tree lines gradually retreating north as temperatures rise. In tropical forests such as the Amazon, where there’s abundant biodiversity, even modest levels of climate change can cause high levels of extinction.
IMPACTS OF DEFORESTATION
When large areas of forest are destroyed it’s disastrous for the local species and communities that rely on them. Dying trees emit their stores of carbon dioxide, adding to atmospheric greenhouse gases and setting us on a course for runaway global warming.
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