Climate change and its effect on the environment.

 

Climate change and its effect on the environment

Long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns primarily resulting from human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, are known as climate change.

Climate change is already having visible effects on the world. The Earth is warming, rainfall patterns are changing, and rising sea levels. These changes can increase the risk of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and fires.

Some gases in the Earth's atmosphere trap heat and stop it from escaping into space. We call these greenhouse gases. These gases act as a warming blanket around the Earth, known as the 'greenhouse effect'.

Greenhouse gases come from both human and natural sources. Gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide naturally occur in the atmosphere. Others, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), are exclusively the result of human activity.

Human causes of climate change

Humans cause climate change by releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air. Today, more carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere than in the past many years.

We produce greenhouse gases in lots of different ways:

• Burning fossil fuels – Fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal contain carbon dioxide that has been 'locked away' in the ground for thousands of years. When we take these out of the land and burn them, we release the stored carbon dioxide into the air.
• Deforestation – Forests remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Cutting them down means that carbon dioxide builds up quicker since no trees can absorb it. Trees also release the carbon they store when we burn them.
• Cement – Producing cement contributes to climate change, causing 2% of our carbon dioxide emissions.

Climate change can affect our climate system in lots of different ways:

• Warmer land and air.
• Warming oceans.
• Melting sea ice and glaciers.
• Rising sea levels.
• Ocean acidification. (Ocean acidification refers to a reduction in the pH of the ocean over an extended period, caused primarily by the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere.)
• Global greening (global scale greening can be attributed to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rising levels of carbon dioxide increase the rate of photosynthesis and growth in plants)
• Changes in ocean currents.

Impacts of climate change:

Some of the impacts from these changes to our climate system include:

• Risk to water supplies
• Conflict and climate migrants
• Localised flooding
• Flooding of coastal regions
• Damage to marine ecosystems
• Fisheries failing
• Loss of biodiversity
• Change in seasonality
• Heat stress
• Habitable region of pests expands
• Forest mortality and increased risk of fires
• Damage to infrastructure
• Food insecurity