Human activities from pollution to overpopulation are driving up the earth's temperature and fundamentally changing the world around us. As we all know, the main cause is a phenomenon called 'the greenhouse effect'. Gases in the atmosphere such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons let the sun's light in but keep some of the heat from escaping like the glass wall of the greenhouse. The more greenhouses gases in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped, strengthening the greenhouse effect and increasing the Earth's temperature. Human activities like the burning of fossil fuels have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by more than a third since the industrial evolution.
Source : NASA
The rapid increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has warmed the planet at an alarming rate. While Earth's climate has fluctuated in the past. Atmospheric carbon dioxide hasnt reached today's levels in hundreds of thousands of years. Climate change has consequences for our oceans, our weather, our food sources and our health.
This video will show you how the Arctic Ice Cap is depleting.
Ice sheets such as Greenland and Antarctica are melting. The extra water that was once held in glacier causes sea levels to rise and spills out of the oceans, flooding coastal regions. Warmer temperature also make weather more extreme. This means not only more intense major storms,floods and heavy snowfall but also longer and more frequent droughts. These changes in weather pose challenges. Growing crops becomes more difficult. The areas where plants and animals can live, shift and water supplies, diminished,
In addition, to creating new agricultural challenges, climate change can directly impact people's physical health. In urban areas, the warmer atmosphere creates an environment that traps and increases the amount of smog. This is because smog contains ozone particle which increase rapidly at higher temperature. Exposure to higher levels of smog can cause health problems such as asthma, heart disease and lung cancer.
Mixing Energy Resources. Source : National Geographic
While the rapid rate of climate change caused by humans, humans are also the one who can combat it. If we work to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which don't produce greenhouse emissions, we might still be able to prevent some of the worst effects of climate change. One of it is more wildfires, since the 80's the devastating environmental phenomenon is getting more dangerous. They've come to occur five times as often and affect six times the land area and burns five times longer. While this is happening across the globe, It's most famously occurring in California and Australia recently
Source : InformationIsBeautiful.net
The obvious effect is rising sea level, chances are we've all seen pictures of polar bears on a breaking glacier. The climate change community predicted that by the year 2100, sea level would rise up to 1 meter. That could cause coastal areas around the world to become completely uninhabitable this century. Due to ice in Greenland and Antarctica melting faster than anticipated, sea levels could rise up 2.4 metres in that time. In real terms, that means that Earth's land mass would decrease by 1.8 million kilometres. That is fairly the size of Libya.
Next one is food insecurity. Ever improving farming technology over the last few decades, more than 200 million people have been lifted out of hunger. When reality of climate change sets in, that's a real risk that progress could have been undone just as quickly unless we make real changes. This is a particularly difficult challenge because this situation is so complicated. Right now, 30% of the emissions are caused by agriculture industry. That is based on the World Economic Forum. There's already an ongoing impetus to reduce the current climate crisis.
With the ongoing climate change, the ice caps melting is a spanning problem. At this point, scientific models are consistently suggesting within the next few decades, the Arctic circle will be devoided of ice by the summer happen. What's scary is this could happen in the next 20 years. Imagine an arctic without ice. There's a whole host of issues that go along with that as you already know, there are problems with rising sea levels, even if it's only in the summer months, it could lead to a deeper darker and more heat absorbing ocean. This will cause global temperature to rise faster. This effectively means that the earlier effect of climate change make the later effect happen quicker like a snowball effect, technically without the snow.
Source : CarbonBrief
Another effect is the Earth's rain pattern. Global pattern is going to shift dramatically in the future with global climate change. Every extra degree celcius of global temperature, clouds will store 7% more vapor. The extra rain is going to fall in places that are already susceptible to it, most like the humid parts of asia. As precipitation increase, that's balanced out by evaporation in the soil, that means droughts particularly in the Mediterranean and South Africa. The changes in global weather conditions will push tropical cyclone away from the equator at the rate of 60 kilometres per decade.
Despite all these being likely predictions and outcomes of climate change, it can still happen if we don't take any measures. If countries keep disobeying the Paris Agreement, we might see this happen in our lifetime. Imagine millions of people dispersing from their lands and being a sort of "Climate Refugee". If we take precautions early, we could save the Earth and save ourselves.
References
1) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/how-to-live-with-it/health.html
2)https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
3)https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
4)https://www.businessinsider.com/effects-of-climate-change-2014-6
5)https://www.myclimate.org/information/faq/faq-detail/what-are-the-effects-of-climate-change
6)https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/greenland-ice-getting-denser-thats-bad/
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