Some will make it, and some won't. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's assessment, many land, freshwater, and ocean species are shifting their geographic ranges to cooler climes or higher altitudes, in an attempt to escape warming.
They're changing seasonal behaviors and traditional migration patterns, too. And yet many still face "increased extinction risk due to climate change. The earth's marine ecosystems are under pressure as a result of climate change.
Oceans are becoming more acidic, due in large part to their absorption of some of our excess emissions. As this acidification accelerates, it poses a serious threat to underwater life, particularly creatures with calcium carbonate shells or skeletons, including mollusks, crabs, and corals.
This can have a huge impact on shellfisheries. The polar regions are particularly vulnerable to a warming atmosphere. Average temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere on earth, and the world's ice sheets are melting fast. This not only has grave consequences for the region's people, wildlife, and plants; its most serious impact may be on rising sea levels.
By , it's estimated our oceans will be one to four feet higher, threatening coastal systems and low-lying areas, including entire island nations and the world's largest cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Miami as well as Mumbai, Sydney, and Rio de Janeiro. There's no question: Climate change promises a frightening future, and it's too late to turn back the clock.
We've already taken care of that by pumping a century's worth of pollution into the air nearly unchecked. That, of course, is the bad news. But there's also good news.
By aggressively reducing our global emissions now, "we can avoid a lot of the severe consequences that climate change would otherwise bring," says Haq. From dusty fields in the San Joaquin Valley, fungal spores are wafting up, exposing more and more farmworkers to the disease.
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In the United States, the largest source of greenhouse gases is transportation 29 percent , followed closely by electricity production 28 percent and industrial activity 22 percent. Curbing dangerous climate change requires very deep cuts in emissions, as well as the use of alternatives to fossil fuels worldwide. The good news is that countries around the globe have formally committed—as part of the Paris Climate Agreement —to lower their emissions by setting new standards and crafting new policies to meet or even exceed those standards.
To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists tell us that we need to reduce global carbon emissions by as much as 40 percent by For that to happen, the global community must take immediate, concrete steps: to decarbonize electricity generation by equitably transitioning from fossil fuel—based production to renewable energy sources like wind and solar; to electrify our cars and trucks; and to maximize energy efficiency in our buildings, appliances, and industries.
They also said the odds of similar droughts happening in the future had roughly doubled over the past century. And in , the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine announced that we can now confidently attribute some extreme weather events, like heat waves, droughts, and heavy precipitation, directly to climate change.
In other words, global warming has the ability to turn a category 3 storm into a more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early s, as has the number of storms that reach categories 4 and 5. The Atlantic hurricane season included a record-breaking 30 tropical storms, 6 major hurricanes, and 13 hurricanes altogether. With increased intensity come increased damage and death.
The impacts of global warming are being felt everywhere. Extreme heat waves have caused tens of thousands of deaths around the world in recent years. And in an alarming sign of events to come, Antarctica has lost nearly four trillion metric tons of ice since the s. The rate of loss could speed up if we keep burning fossil fuels at our current pace, some experts say, causing sea levels to rise several meters in the next 50 to years and wreaking havoc on coastal communities worldwide.
A: Each year scientists learn more about the consequences of global warming , and each year we also gain new evidence of its devastating impact on people and the planet. As the heat waves, droughts, and floods associated with climate change become more frequent and more intense, communities suffer and death tolls rise. Global warming is already taking a toll on the United States.
Though everyone is affected by climate change, not everyone is affected equally. Indigenous people, people of color, and the economically marginalized are typically hit the hardest. Inequities built into our housing , health care , and labor systems make these communities more vulnerable to the worst impacts of climate change—even though these same communities have done the least to contribute to it. A: In recent years, China has taken the lead in global-warming pollution , producing about 26 percent of all CO2 emissions.
The United States comes in second. And America is still number one, by far, in cumulative emissions over the past years.
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