essay on effects of climate change on environment

Climate Change Impacts

Explore the impacts of climate change with our effects of climate change essay. Learn more about climate change causes, effects, and solutions with the help of our sample. Keep reading to gain inspiration for your essay on climate change and its impact.

Effects of Climate Change: Essay Conclusion

Climate change, climate change impacts, managing climate change, effects of climate change: essay introduction.

It is doubtless that global change has become one the challenges, which encompasses a wide range of human life, including social and economical aspects of human life. Research has indicated that climate change will continue affecting the world as long as proper measures are not taken to protect the environment.

In this line of thought, human activities have been widely blamed for escalating effects of climate change around the world (Hillel & Rosenzweig 2010). Only time will tell whether taming climate change is possible or not.

In this regard, this assessment covers the impact of climate change in our lives today even as world leaders burn midnight oil to develop strategies, aimed at taming the scourge. This proposal topic has an array of benefits, especially in understanding the fatal nature of climate change.

It will mainly focus on the effects of climate change and make proposals on how to counteract the effects of climate together some of the preventive measures being considered by international leaders.

Through literature review, this project will compare different views as argued by different authors in order to synthesize the issue with varying view points. This will be crucial in capturing the main objective of the projects, which revolves around the analysis of the effects of climate change in the world today.

How is climate change defined? Although different environmental experts tend to have different definitions, the Australian Government defines climate change as the weather pattern observed for several years. These changes are mainly caused by human activities, which negatively impact the environment.

With reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in the year 2007, climate change is no longer a myth, but a reality, whose impact has continually escalated from 1950s, mainly due to rising levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

This implies that human activities have significantly contributed this environmental scourge, which continues to affect most parts of the world. The IPCC report was a representation of the world view on climate change, collected from various scientific journals published around the world (Australian Government 2012).

The Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency affirms that there is enough evidence to support the fact that the climate system of the earth has continuously been warming. Some of the observations made include the rising level of air in the world and high ocean temperatures. Others are the rising sea level, constant melting of snow and ice in most parts of the world.

One important fact to note about climate change is that it involves the rising temperatures of the climate system holistically, including all the oceans, atmosphere and the cryosphere. These findings concluded that the climate system is in a heating mode.

Even as we review other people’s work, it is important to note that climate change is more than mere global warming as perceived by most people. From scientific revelation, the climate will be varied broadly especially if the warming continues uncontrollably (Australian Government 2012). As a result, the world is likely to experience irregular rainfall patterns, occurrence of severe climatic events like heavy currents and droughts among others.

The impact of climate change has been felt in every part of the world. According to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Asia, Africa and Latin America are among the regions of the world, which have severely been affected by the scourge. In a 2010 survey carried out by Climate Change Secretariat, Africa is under the pressure of climate change and remains vulnerable to these effects.

Unlike most parts of the world, Africa experiences varying climatic changes. Common occurrences in Africa are severe droughts and floods, which have had negative implications on the continent’s economy (UNFCCC 2010).

The two events are widely known to predispose famine and overall interference with the socio-well being of the society. According to the UNFCCC’s analysis, close to a third of Africa’s population inhabit drought-prone regions, while more than two million remain vulnerable to drought every year (UNFCCC 2010).

In understanding the implication of climate change in Africa, the survey found out that the issue of climate change is intertwined with several factors, which contribute to its escalation across the continent.

Some of these factors include poverty, weak institutions, illiteracy, lack of information and technology, limited infrastructure, poor accessibility to resources, poor management and conflicts. In addition, there is widespread exploitation of land, which remains a major threat to the climate.

Due to pressure on farming land, most farmers exert pressure through over-cultivation and deforestation. In addition, other factors like dunes and storms continue posing more negative threats to the environment and human beings (UNFCCC 2010).

As a result of these events, the continent experiences drought and overall scarcity of water. Due to this emerging trend, Africa is likely to face shortage of rainfall and overall scarcity of water. With Africa having several trans-boundary river basins, the continent is likely to experience conflicts over these basins. Another important aspect captured in the report is agriculture (UNFCCC 2010).

Since most subsistence farmers in Africa depend on rainfall and irrigation, the sector has been affected by insufficient supply in most Sub-Saharan regions. Besides this, UNFCCC notes that climate change has resulted into loss of agricultural land and a drop in subsistence crop production. With a good percentage of the population under the threat of starvation, climate change has undoubtedly led to escalation of insufficient food supply.

It is amazing to note that climate change has also contributed to the spread of some diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhea in most parts of Africa. As stated by the UNFCCC, there has been a shift in the distribution of disease vectors.

For instance, migration of mosquitoes to regions of higher altitude is likely to expose people in such regions to the risk of contracting malaria (UNFCCC 2010). Additionally, climate change is likely to result into negative impact on African ecosystems and habitats, which are already threatened by these changes. Due to reduced habitat and changing climatic conditions some species are likely to move to more tolerable regions.

In this line of though Robert Watson, Marufu Zinyowera and Richard Moss found out that climate change can have severe effects on human health. In a research carried out in 1998, the three reiterated that human health may be affected as a result of heat-stress mortality, urban air pollution and vector-borne diseases, which could be favored as a result of change in temperature or rainfall in a given ecosystem (Watson, Zinyowera & Moss 1998, p. 7).

Additionally, Watson, Zinyowera and Moss argued that these effects are commonly felt in developing countries, where lives are lost, communities affected and the cost in medical care rises due to high prevalence of some health complications.

With regard to the impact of climate change on biodiversity, Watson, Zinyowera and Moss, agree with UNFCCC’s findings. In their 1998 survey, the three argued that all ecosystems play a fundamental role in the society (Watson, Zinyowera & Moss 1998).

For instance, they are a source of goods and services to any society. In particular, these goods and services include provision of food, processing and storage of carbon and other nutrients, assimilation of wastes and provision of recreation and tourism opportunities among others.

As a result, they argued that climatic changes are known to alter the geographical local of various ecological systems, including the presence of certain species and their ability to remain productive to support the society. According to their findings, ecological systems are essentially dynamic and are commonly affected by climatic variations of whichever magnitude.

Nevertheless, the extreme to which the climate varies determines the changes, which occur in the ecosystem. In addition, the three authors noted the high level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was a major contributing factor towards climate changes taking place in the world today (Watson, Zinyowera & Moss 1998).

Besides influencing the ecosystems, Watson, Zinyowera and Moss noted that climate change may also have secondary effects, say, variations in soil characteristics and interference of regimes. These include diseases, pests and diseases, which are likely to support the existence of some species favorably than others (Watson, Zinyowera & Moss 1998).

This will automatically affect the survival of some species and the overall population of organisms. Similarly, they argued that that climate change has direct impact on food production in most parts of the world. According to the 1998 survey, the type of agricultural systems in place determines the manner in which crop productivity is affected by changes in climatic conditions and patterns.

Like many other scholars, Barrie Pittock spent his life studying the environment and how it is affected by changes in climate. In his 2009, survey, Climate Change: The Science, Impacts and Solutions , Pittock outlined several reasons why there is cause for alarm, regarding climate change in the world today.

According to Pittock, the UNFCCC seeks to reduce the impact of climate change by being on the frontline in the war against global warming (Pittock 2009, p. 107). He further noted that human-induced climate change is a major security threat in the world today. This stance is mainly backed by the well-known effects of climate change described by the UNFCCC and the IPCC.

Moreover, Pittock reiterated that climate change has complex effects in the world today, citing a number of examples. In cases where there is high rainfall resulting from climate change, the world may experience direct or indirect implications.

This could be seen through high or low crop yield, depending on the type of soil or crop. On the other hand, indirect effects may refer to changes in demand and supply, emanating from either low or high yield, depending on other factors. He therefore agreed with several authors and researchers who have enumerated implications of climate change on the environment and human life at large.

For example, Pittock noted that climate change has been a major cause of water shortages in most parts of the world (Pittock 2009, p. 108). He however attributed this to a number of factors, including precipitation decrease in some regions, high rates of evaporation in the world and general loss of glaciers.

Economically, Pittock noted that climate change affects the economic progress of a nation since resources may be diverted to disease control instead of advancing developing projects.

Moreover, it is important to note that most of the countries, which suffer severely as a result of climate change, are poor nations that lack stable economic muscles. As a result, there is a likelihood of richer countries becoming stronger as developing economies weaken further. Lastly, Pittock noted that some of the threats emanating from climate change cause irreversible damages, which end up haunting human beings forever (Pittock 2009, p. 109).

With reference to a number of scholars who have done research on the impact of climate change, it is evident that human activities have a role in the escalation of these effects. In his 2010 survey, Martin Kernan noted that there is a relation between human activities and global warming.

As a result of this global relationship, the world has registered an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In this survey, he noted that the increase in green house gases is rampant in the northern hemisphere than any other part of the world.

As a result of high temperatures, Martin underscore that the changes have impact on the composition of natural ecosystems, regarding species population and their ability to survive (Kernan 2010, p. 15). What is most evident in Martin’s research is his comparison of the current state of the climate, to what was known hundreds of years ago.

Climate change also affects the quality of water in the United States. According to a research carried out by Robert Mendelsohn and James Neumann, water plays an important role in the life of a human being. Some of these functions include but not limited to power generation, food production, recreation and ecological processes (Mendelsohn & Mendelsohn 2004, p. 133).

However, this is only possible if the water is available and of good quality. Thus, changes in spatial distribution and quality can have direct social and economic effects on the society.

This alteration may occur as a result of increased concentration in greenhouse gases. Climate change can be detected by observing variation in temperatures, frequent and intense droughts and altered precipitation patterns among other factors (Mendelsohn & Mendelsohn 2004, p. 133).

The findings on the impact of climate change on the quality of water have also been pursued by Jan Dam, who argued that natural systems are usually sensitive to changes in climate variation. Hydrological quality is mainly affected by the temperature or concentration of water (Dam 2003, p. 95).

When oceans and other water bodies overheat because of high temperatures, this may result into negative impact on aquatic animals, which adapt to certain hydrological temperatures. Similarly, the quality of water is always altered when gases like carbon dioxide are dissolved in water basins. This may affect the mix of species present in a given ecosystem.

Based on the impact of climate change, it is doubtless that management of the risks has to be effected promptly before they become fatal and irreversible. One of the ways of controlling climate change is through reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

This can be achieved through several ways, which minimize the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (McCarthy 2001, p. 222). According to James McCarthy, this can be realized by adopting alternative sources of energy unlike how most economies rely of oil and petroleum products as the main source of energy. Additionally, good methods of farming are important to maintain the value of the environment for sustainable support.

Use of international legislations is also necessary in ensuring that rich countries do not exploit developing nations as they are major contributors of effluents into the atmosphere (Hillel & Rosenzweig 2010). Above all, the fight against climate change calls for environmental campaign, which requires the efforts of everybody in the world.

From the above review of literature, it is clear that climate change is a major socio and environmental issue affecting the world today. Mainly caused by human activities, climate change poses a chain of challenges and threats to the environment.

For instance, there are several diseases, which affect human beings as a result of climate change (Rosenberg & Edmonds 2005). Of importance is also the alteration of the quality of the natural environment, which affects biodiversity. This has led to the extinction of some species, while others have increased exponentially in numbers.

Moreover, it is imperative to note that some of the occurrences, which are considered to be natural, are caused by climate change. Common ones include floods and draughts (Faure, Gupta & Nentjes 2003, p. 340).

Most of these calamities continue to be recognized as natural disasters yet they can be controlled using simple mitigation measures. In most cases, adoption of renewable sources of energy has always been considered to be the most important way of saving the world from climate change. Although it is a complex issue to handle, joint global efforts are important in making progress.

Australian Government 2012, Impacts of climate change .

Dam, J 2003, Impacts of Climate Change and Climate Variability on Hydrological Regimes , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

Faure, M, Gupta, J & Nentjes, A 2003, Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol: The Role of Institutions and Instruments to Control Global Change , Edward Elgar Publishing, United Kingdom.

Hillel, D & Rosenzweig, C 2010, Handbook of Climate Change and Agroecosystems: Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation , World Scientific, Singapore.

Kernan, M 2010, Climate Change Impacts on Freshwater Ecosystems , John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey.

Mendelsohn, R & Neumann, J 2004, The Impact Of Climate Change On The United States Economy , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

Pittock, B 2009, Climate Change: The Science, Impacts and Solutions , Csiro Publishing, Sydney.

Rosenberg, N, & Edmonds, J 2005, Climate Change Impacts for the Conterminous USA: An Integrated Assessment , Springer, New York.

UNFCCC 2010, Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation In Developing Countries.

Watson, R, Zinyowera, M & Moss, R 1998, The Regional Impacts of Climate Change: An Assessment of Vulnerability , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

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Climate Change Essay for Students and Children

500+ words climate change essay.

Climate change refers to the change in the environmental conditions of the earth. This happens due to many internal and external factors. The climatic change has become a global concern over the last few decades. Besides, these climatic changes affect life on the earth in various ways. These climatic changes are having various impacts on the ecosystem and ecology. Due to these changes, a number of species of plants and animals have gone extinct.

When Did it Start?

The climate started changing a long time ago due to human activities but we came to know about it in the last century. During the last century, we started noticing the climatic change and its effect on human life. We started researching on climate change and came to know that the earth temperature is rising due to a phenomenon called the greenhouse effect. The warming up of earth surface causes many ozone depletion, affect our agriculture , water supply, transportation, and several other problems.

Reason Of Climate Change

Although there are hundreds of reason for the climatic change we are only going to discuss the natural and manmade (human) reasons.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Natural Reasons

These include volcanic eruption , solar radiation, tectonic plate movement, orbital variations. Due to these activities, the geographical condition of an area become quite harmful for life to survive. Also, these activities raise the temperature of the earth to a great extent causing an imbalance in nature.

Human Reasons

Man due to his need and greed has done many activities that not only harm the environment but himself too. Many plant and animal species go extinct due to human activity. Human activities that harm the climate include deforestation, using fossil fuel , industrial waste , a different type of pollution and many more. All these things damage the climate and ecosystem very badly. And many species of animals and birds got extinct or on a verge of extinction due to hunting.

Effects Of Climatic Change

These climatic changes have a negative impact on the environment. The ocean level is rising, glaciers are melting, CO2 in the air is increasing, forest and wildlife are declining, and water life is also getting disturbed due to climatic changes. Apart from that, it is calculated that if this change keeps on going then many species of plants and animals will get extinct. And there will be a heavy loss to the environment.

What will be Future?

If we do not do anything and things continue to go on like right now then a day in future will come when humans will become extinct from the surface of the earth. But instead of neglecting these problems we start acting on then we can save the earth and our future.

Although humans mistake has caused great damage to the climate and ecosystem. But, it is not late to start again and try to undo what we have done until now to damage the environment. And if every human start contributing to the environment then we can be sure of our existence in the future.

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What Are the Effects of Climate Change?

A rapidly warming planet poses an existential threat to all life on earth. Just how bad it gets depends on how quickly we act.

An area flooded by Super Typhoon Noru in the Bulacan Province of the Philippines, September 26, 2022

Rouelle Umali/Xinhua via Getty Images

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Climate change is our planet’s greatest existential threat . If we don’t limit greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, the consequences of rising global temperatures include massive crop and fishery collapse, the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of species, and entire communities becoming uninhabitable. While these outcomes may still be avoidable, climate change is already causing suffering and death. From raging wildfires and supercharged storms, its compounding effects can be felt today, outside our own windows.

Understanding these impacts can help us prepare for what’s here, what’s avoidable, and what’s yet to come, and to better prepare and protect all communities. Even though everyone is or will be affected by climate change, those living in the world’s poorest countries—which have contributed least to the problem—are the most climate-vulnerable. They have the fewest financial resources to respond to crises or adapt, and they’re closely dependent on a healthy, thriving natural world for food and income. Similarly, in the United States, it is most often low-income communities and communities of color that are on the frontlines of climate impacts. And because climate change and rising inequality are interconnected crises, decision makers must take action to combat both—and all of us must fight for climate justice. Here’s what you need to know about what we’re up against.

Effects of climate change on weather

Effects of climate change on the environment, effects of climate change on agriculture, effects of climate change on animals, effects of climate change on humans, future effects of climate change.

As global temperatures climb, widespread shifts in weather systems occur, making events like droughts , hurricanes , and floods more intense and unpredictable. Extreme weather events that may have hit just once in our grandparents’ lifetimes are becoming more common in ours. However, not every place will experience the same effects: Climate change may cause severe drought in one region while making floods more likely in another.

Already, the planet has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since the preindustrial era began 250 years ago, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) . And scientists warn it could reach a worst-case scenario of 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 if we fail to tackle the causes of climate change —namely, the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) .

Tokyo during a record-breaking heat wave, August 13, 2020

The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images

Higher average temperatures

This change in global average temperature—seemingly small but consequential and climbing—means that, each summer, we are likely to experience increasingly sweltering heat waves. Even local news meteorologists are starting to connect strings of record-breaking days to new long-term trends, which are especially problematic in regions where infrastructure and housing have not been built with intensifying heat in mind. And heat waves aren’t just uncomfortable—they’re the leading cause of weather-related fatalities in the United States.

Longer-lasting droughts

Hotter temperatures increase the rate at which water evaporates from the air, leading to more severe and pervasive droughts . Already, climate change has pushed the American West into a severe “megadrought”—the driest 22-year stretch recorded in at least 1,200 years—shrinking drinking water supplies, withering crops , and making forests more susceptible to insect infestations. Drought can also create a positive feedback loop in which drier soil and less plant cover cause even faster evaporation.

More intense wildfires

This drier, hotter climate also creates conditions that fuel more vicious wildfire seasons—with fires that spread faster and burn longer—putting millions of additional lives and homes at risk. The number of large wildfires doubled between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States. And in California alone, the annual area burned by wildfires increased 500 percent between 1972 and 2018.

Evacuation after Hurricane Harvey in Houston, August 28, 2017

David J. Phillip/AP Photo

Stronger storms

Warmer air also holds more moisture, making tropical cyclones wetter, stronger, and more capable of rapidly intensifying. In the latest report from the IPCC , scientists found that daily rainfall during extreme precipitation events would increase by about 7 percent for each degree Celsius of global warming, increasing the dangers of flooding . The frequency of severe Category 4 and 5 hurricanes is also expected to increase. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey, a devastating Category 4 storm, dumped a record 275 trillion pounds of rain and resulted in dozens of deaths in the Houston area.

From the poles to the tropics, climate change is disrupting ecosystems. Even a seemingly slight shift in temperature can cause dramatic changes that ripple through food webs and the environment.

The lake at Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon in Iceland, which has grown because of continued glacial melting

Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo

Melting sea ice

The effects of climate change are most apparent in the world’s coldest regions—the poles. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as anywhere else on earth, leading to the rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, where a massive amount of water is stored. As sea ice melts, darker ocean waters that absorb more sunlight become exposed, creating a positive feedback loop that speeds up the melting process. In just 15 years, the Arctic could be entirely ice-free in the summer.

Sea level rise

Scientists predict that melting sea ice and glaciers, as well as the fact that warmer water expands in volume, could cause sea levels to rise as much as 6.6 feet by the end of the century, should we fail to curb emissions. The extent (and pace) of this change would devastate low-lying regions, including island nations and densely populated coastal cities like New York City and Mumbai.

But sea level rise at far lower levels is still costly, dangerous, and disruptive. According to the 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report from the National Ocean Service, the United States will see a foot of sea level rise by 2050, which will regularly damage infrastructure, like roads, sewage treatment plants, and even power plants . Beaches that families have grown up visiting may be gone by the end of the century. Sea level rise also harms the environment, as encroaching seawater can both erode coastal ecosystems and invade freshwater inland aquifers, which we rely on for agriculture and drinking water. Saltwater incursion is already reshaping life in nations like Bangladesh , where one-quarter of the lands lie less than 7 feet above sea level.

A waterlogged road, caused by rainstorm and upstream flood discharge, in the Shaoguan, Guangdong Province of China, June 21, 2022

Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In addition to coastal flooding caused by sea level rise, climate change influences the factors that result in inland and urban flooding: snowmelt and heavy rain. As global warming continues to both exacerbate sea level rise and extreme weather, our nation’s floodplains are expected to grow by approximately 45 percent by 2100. In 2022, deadly flooding in Pakistan—which inundated as much as a third of the country—resulted from torrential rains mixed with melting glaciers and snow.

Warmer ocean waters and marine heat waves

Oceans are taking the brunt of our climate crisis. Covering more than 70 percent of the planet’s surface, oceans absorb 93 percent of all the heat that’s trapped by greenhouse gases and up to 30 percent of all the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels.

Temperature-sensitive fish and other marine life are already changing migration patterns toward cooler and deeper waters to survive, sending food webs and important commercial fisheries into disarray. And the frequency of marine heat waves has increased by more than a third . These spikes have led to mass die-offs of plankton and marine mammals.

To make matters worse, the elevated absorption of carbon dioxide by the ocean leads to its gradual acidification , which alters the fundamental chemical makeup of the water and threatens marine life that has evolved to live in a narrow pH band. Animals like corals, oysters, and mussels will likely feel these effects first, as acidification disrupts the calcification process required to build their shells.

Ecosystem stressors

Land-based ecosystems—from old-growth forests to savannahs to tropical rainforests—are faring no better. Climate change is likely to increase outbreaks of pests, invasive species, and pathogen infections in forests. It’s changing the kinds of vegetation that can thrive in a given region and disrupting the life cycles of wildlife, all of which is changing the composition of ecosystems and making them less resilient to stressors. While ecosystems have the capacity to adapt, many are reaching the hard limits of that natural capacity . More repercussions will follow as temperatures rise.

Climate change appears to be triggering a series of cascading ecological changes that we can neither fully predict nor, once they have enough momentum, fully stop. This ecosystem destabilization may be most apparent when it comes to keystone species that have an outsize- role in holding up an ecosystem’s structure.

Coffee plants destroyed by frost due to extremely low temperatures near Caconde in the São Paulo state of Brazil, August 25, 2021

Jonne Roriz/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Less predictable growing seasons

In a warming world, farming crops is more unpredictable—and livestock, which are sensitive to extreme weather, become harder to raise. Climate change shifts precipitation patterns, causing unpredictable floods and longer-lasting droughts. More frequent and severe hurricanes can devastate an entire season’s worth of crops. Meanwhile, the dynamics of pests, pathogens, and invasive species—all of which are costly for farmers to manage—are also expected to become harder to predict. This is bad news, given that most of the world’s farms are small and family-run. One bad drought or flood could decimate an entire season’s crop or herd. For example, in June 2022, a triple-digit heat wave in Kansas wiped out thousands of cows. While the regenerative agriculture movement is empowering rural communities to make their lands more resilient to climate change, unfortunately, not all communities can equitably access the support services that can help them embrace these more sustainable farming tactics.

Reduced soil health

Healthy soil has good moisture and mineral content and is teeming with bugs, bacteria, fungi, and microbes that in turn contribute to healthy crops. But climate change, particularly extreme heat and changes in precipitation, can degrade soil quality. These impacts are exacerbated in areas where industrial, chemical-dependent monoculture farming has made soil and crops less able to withstand environmental changes.

Food shortages

Ultimately, impacts to our agricultural systems pose a direct threat to the global food supply. And food shortages and price hikes driven by climate change will not affect everyone equally: Wealthier people will continue to have more options for accessing food, while potentially billions of others will be plummeted into food insecurity—adding to the billions that already have moderate or severe difficulty getting enough to eat.

The poison dart frog’s survival is currently threatened by habitat loss and climate change.

Chris Mattison/Minden Pictures

It’s about far more than just the polar bears: Half of all animal species in the world’s most biodiverse places, like the Amazon rainforest and the Galapagos Islands, are at risk of extinction from climate change. And climate change is threatening species that are already suffering from the biodiversity crisis, which is driven primarily by changes in land and ocean use (like converting wild places to farmland) and direct exploitation of species (like overfishing and wildlife trade). With species already in rough shape—more than 500,000 species have insufficient habitat for long-term survival—unchecked climate change is poised to push millions over the edge.

Climate change rapidly and fundamentally alters (or in some cases, destroys) the habitat that wildlife have incrementally adapted to over millennia. This is especially harmful for species’ habitats that are currently under threat from other causes. Ice-dependent mammals like walruses and penguins, for example, won’t fare well as ice sheets shrink. Rapid shifts in ocean temperatures stress the algae that nourishes coral reefs, causing reefs to starve—an increasingly common phenomenon known as coral bleaching . Disappearing wetlands in the Midwest’s Prairie Pothole Region means the loss of watering holes and breeding grounds for millions of migratory birds. (Many species are now struggling to survive, as more than 85 percent of wetlands have been lost since 1700). And sea level rise will inundate or erode away many coastal habitats, where hundreds of species of birds, invertebrates, and other marine species live.

Many species’ behaviors—mating, feeding, migration—are closely tied to subtle seasonal shifts, as in temperature , precipitation level, and foliage. In some cases, changes to the environment are happening quicker than species are able to adapt. When the types and quantity of plant life change across a region, or when certain species bloom or hatch earlier or later than in the past, it impacts food and water supplies and reverberates up food chains.

Wildfire smoke–filled air in Multnomah County, Oregon, September 16, 2020

Motoya Nakamura/Multnomah County Communications, CC BY NC-ND 4.0

Ultimately, the way climate change impacts weather, the environment, animals, and agriculture affects humanity as well. But there’s more. Around the world, our ways of life—from how we get our food to the industries around which our economies are based—have all developed in the context of relatively stable climates. As global warming shakes this foundation, it promises to alter the very fabric of society. At worst, this could lead to widespread famine, disease, war, displacement , injury, and death. For many around the world, this grim forecast is already their reality. In this way, climate change poses an existential threat to all human life.

Human health

Climate change worsens air quality . It increases exposure to hazardous wildfire smoke and ozone smog triggered by warmer conditions, both of which harm our health, particularly for those with pre-existing illnesses like asthma or heart disease.

Insect-borne diseases like malaria and Zika become more prevalent in a warming world as their carriers are able to exist in more regions or thrive for longer seasons. In the past 30 years, the incidence of Lyme disease from ticks has nearly doubled in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Thousands of people face injury, illness , and death every year from more frequent or more intense extreme weather events. At a 2-degree Celsius rise in global average temperature, an estimated one billion people will face heat stress risk. In the summer of 2022 alone, thousands died in record-shattering heat waves across Europe. Weeks later, dozens were killed by record-breaking urban flooding in the United States and South Korea—and more than 1,500 people perished in the flooding in Pakistan , where resulting stagnant water and unsanitary conditions threaten even more.

The effects of climate change—and the looming threat of what’s yet to come—take a significant toll on mental health too. One 2021 study on climate anxiety, published in the journal Nature , surveyed 10,000 young people from 10 different countries. Forty-five percent of respondents said that their feelings about climate change, varying from anxiety to powerlessness to anger, impacted their daily lives.

A patient with dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease, in Karachi, Pakistan, where the spread of diseases worsened due to flooding, September 2022

Fareed Khan/AP Photo

Worsening inequity

The climate crisis exacerbates existing inequities. Though wealthy nations, such as the United States, have emitted the lion’s share of historical greenhouse gas emissions, it’s developing countries that may lack the resources to adapt and will now bear the brunt of the climate crisis. In some cases, low-lying island nations—like many in the Pacific —may cease to exist before developed economies make meaningful reductions to their carbon emissions.

Even within wealthier nations, disparities will continue to grow between those rich enough to shield themselves from the realities of climate change and those who cannot. Those with ample resources will not be displaced from their homes by wars over food or water—at least not right away. They will have homes with cool air during heat waves and be able to easily evacuate when a hurricane is headed their way. They will be able to buy increasingly expensive food and access treatment for respiratory illness caused by wildfire smoke. Billions of others can’t—and are paying the highest price for climate pollution they did not produce.

Hurricane Katrina, for example, displaced more than one million people around the Gulf Coast. But in New Orleans , where redlining practices promoted racial and economic segregation, the city’s more affluent areas tended to be located on higher ground—and those residents were able to return and rebuild much faster than others.

Displacement

Climate change will drive displacement due to impacts like food and water scarcities, sea level rise, and economic instability. It’s already happening. The United Nations Global Compact on Refugees recognizes that “climate, environmental degradation and disasters increasingly interact with the drivers of refugee movements.” Again, communities with the fewest resources—including those facing political instability and poverty—will feel the effects first and most devastatingly.

A flood-damaged home in Queens, New York, December 1, 2021

K.C. Wilsey/FEMA

Economic impacts

According to the 2018 National Climate Assessment, unless action is taken, climate change will cost the U.S. economy as much as $500 billion per year by the end of the century. And that doesn’t even include its enormous impacts on human health . Entire local industries—from commercial fishing to tourism to husbandry—are at risk of collapsing, along with the economic support they provide.

Recovering from the destruction wrought by extreme weather like hurricanes, flash floods, and wildfires is also getting more expensive every year. In 2021, the price tag of weather disasters in the United States totaled $145 billion —the third-costliest year on record, including a number of billion-dollar weather events.

The first wave of impacts can already be felt in our communities and seen on the nightly news. The World Health Organization says that in the near future, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year from things like malnutrition, insect-borne diseases, and heat stress. And the World Bank estimates that climate change could displace more than 140 million people within their home countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America by 2050.

But the degree to which the climate crisis upends our lives depends on whether global leaders decide to chart a different course. If we fail to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists predict a catastrophic 4.3 degrees Celsius , (or around 8 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century. What would a world that warm look like? Wars over water. Crowded hospitals to contend with spreading disease. Collapsed fisheries. Dead coral reefs. Even more lethal heat waves. These are just some of the impacts predicted by climate scientists .

Solar panel installation at a floating photovoltaic plant on a lake in Haltern am See, Germany, April 2022

Martin Meissner/AP Photo

Climate mitigation, or our ability to reverse climate change and undo its widespread effects, hinges on the successful enactment of policies that yield deep cuts to carbon pollution, end our dependence on dangerous fossil fuels and the deadly air pollution they generate, and prioritize the people and ecosystems on the frontlines. And these actions must be taken quickly in order to ensure a healthier present day and future. In one of its latest reports, the IPCC presented its most optimistic emissions scenario, in which the world only briefly surpasses 1.5 degrees of warming but sequestration measures cause it to dip back below by 2100. Climate adaptation , a term that refers to coping with climate impacts, is no longer optional ; it’s necessary, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable populations.

By following the urgent warnings of the IPCC and limiting warming, we may be able to avoid passing some of the critical thresholds that, once crossed, can lead to potentially irreversible, catastrophic impacts for the planet, including more warming. These thresholds are known as climate tipping points and refer to when a natural system "tips" into an entirely different state. One example would be Arctic permafrost, which stores carbon like a freezer: As the permafrost melts from warming temperatures, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Importantly, climate action is not a binary pass-fail test. Every fraction of a degree of warming that we prevent will reduce human suffering and death, and keep more of the planet’s natural systems intact. The good news is that a wide range of solutions exist to sharply reduce emissions, slow the pace of warming, and protect communities on the frontlines of climate impacts. Climate leaders the world over—those on major political stages as well as grassroots community activists—are offering up alternative models to systems that prioritize polluters over people. Many of these solutions are rooted in ancestral and Indigenous understandings of the natural world and have existed for millennia. Some solutions require major investments into clean, renewable energy and sustainable technologies. To be successful, climate solutions must also address intersecting crises—like poverty, racism, and gender inequality —that compound and drive the causes and impacts of the climate crisis. A combination of human ingenuity and immense political will can help us get there.

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• ENVIRONMENT

How global warming is disrupting life on Earth

The signs of global warming are everywhere, and are more complex than just climbing temperatures.

Our planet is getting hotter. Since the Industrial Revolution—an event that spurred the use of fossil fuels in everything from power plants to transportation—Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius, about 2 degrees Fahrenheit.  

That may sound insignificant, but 2023 was the hottest year on record , and all 10 of the hottest years on record have occurred in the past decade.  

Global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably as synonyms, but scientists prefer to use “climate change” when describing the complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems.  

Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also natural disasters, shifting wildlife habitats, rising seas , and a range of other impacts. All of these changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases , like carbon dioxide and methane, to the atmosphere.

What causes global warming?

When fossil fuel emissions are pumped into the atmosphere, they change the chemistry of our atmosphere, allowing sunlight to reach the Earth but preventing heat from being released into space. This keeps Earth warm, like a greenhouse, and this warming is known as the greenhouse effect .  

Carbon dioxide is the most commonly found greenhouse gas and about 75 percent of all the climate warming pollution in the atmosphere. This gas is a product of producing and burning oil, gas, and coal. About a quarter of Carbon dioxide also results from land cleared for timber or agriculture.  

Methane is another common greenhouse gas. Although it makes up only about 16 percent of emissions, it's roughly 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide and dissipates more quickly. That means methane can cause a large spark in warming, but ending methane pollution can also quickly limit the amount of atmospheric warming. Sources of this gas include agriculture (mostly livestock), leaks from oil and gas production, and waste from landfills.  

What are the effects of global warming?  

One of the most concerning impacts of global warming is the effect warmer temperatures will have on Earth's polar regions and mountain glaciers. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet. This warming reduces critical ice habitat and it disrupts the flow of the jet stream, creating more unpredictable weather patterns around the globe.  

( Learn more about the jet stream. )

A warmer planet doesn't just raise temperatures. Precipitation is becoming more extreme as the planet heats. For every degree your thermometer rises, the air holds about seven percent more moisture. This increase in moisture in the atmosphere can produce flash floods, more destructive hurricanes, and even paradoxically, stronger snow storms.  

The world's leading scientists regularly gather to review the latest research on how the planet is changing. The results of this review is synthesized in regularly published reports known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.  

A recent report outlines how disruptive a global rise in temperature can be:

• Coral reefs are now a highly endangered ecosystem. When corals face environmental stress, such as high heat, they expel their colorful algae and turn a ghostly white, an effect known as coral bleaching . In this weakened state, they more easily die.  
• Trees are increasingly dying from drought , and this mass mortality is reshaping forest ecosystems.
• Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns are making wildfires more common and more widespread. Research shows they're even moving into the eastern U.S. where fires have historically been less common.
• Hurricanes are growing more destructive and dumping more rain, an effect that will result in more damage. Some scientists say we even need to be preparing for Cat 6 storms . (The current ranking system ends at Cat 5.)

How can we limit global warming?  

Limiting the rising in global warming is theoretically achievable, but politically, socially, and economically difficult.  

Those same sources of greenhouse gas emissions must be limited to reduce warming. For example, oil and gas used to generate electricity or power industrial manufacturing will need to be replaced by net zero emission technology like wind and solar power. Transportation, another major source of emissions, will need to integrate more electric vehicles, public transportation, and innovative urban design, such as safe bike lanes and walkable cities.  

( Learn more about solutions to limit global warming. )

One global warming solution that was once considered far fetched is now being taken more seriously: geoengineering. This type of technology relies on manipulating the Earth's atmosphere to physically block the warming rays of the sun or by sucking carbon dioxide straight out of the sky.

Restoring nature may also help limit warming. Trees, oceans, wetlands, and other ecosystems help absorb excess carbon—but when they're lost, so too is their potential to fight climate change.  

Ultimately, we'll need to adapt to warming temperatures, building homes to withstand sea level rise for example, or more efficiently cooling homes during heat waves.  

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• CLIMATE CHANGE
• ENVIRONMENT AND CONSERVATION
• POLAR REGIONS

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Human activity affects global surface temperatures by changing Earth ’s radiative balance—the “give and take” between what comes in during the day and what Earth emits at night. Increases in greenhouse gases —i.e., trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that absorb heat energy emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiate it back—generated by industry and transportation cause the atmosphere to retain more heat, which increases temperatures and alters precipitation patterns.

Global warming, the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries, happens mostly in the troposphere , the lowest level of the atmosphere, which extends from Earth’s surface up to a height of 6–11 miles. This layer contains most of Earth’s clouds and is where living things and their habitats and weather primarily occur.

Continued global warming is expected to impact everything from energy use to water availability to crop productivity throughout the world. Poor countries and communities with limited abilities to adapt to these changes are expected to suffer disproportionately. Global warming is already being associated with increases in the incidence of severe and extreme weather, heavy flooding , and wildfires —phenomena that threaten homes, dams, transportation networks, and other facets of human infrastructure. Learn more about how the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, describes the social impacts of global warming.

Polar bears live in the Arctic , where they use the region’s ice floes as they hunt seals and other marine mammals . Temperature increases related to global warming have been the most pronounced at the poles, where they often make the difference between frozen and melted ice. Polar bears rely on small gaps in the ice to hunt their prey. As these gaps widen because of continued melting, prey capture has become more challenging for these animals.

Recent News

global warming , the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near the surface of Earth over the past one to two centuries. Climate scientists have since the mid-20th century gathered detailed observations of various weather phenomena (such as temperatures, precipitation , and storms) and of related influences on climate (such as ocean currents and the atmosphere’s chemical composition). These data indicate that Earth’s climate has changed over almost every conceivable timescale since the beginning of geologic time and that human activities since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have a growing influence over the pace and extent of present-day climate change .

Giving voice to a growing conviction of most of the scientific community , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2021, noted that the best estimate of the increase in global average surface temperature between 1850 and 2019 was 1.07 °C (1.9 °F). An IPCC special report produced in 2018 noted that human beings and their activities have been responsible for a worldwide average temperature increase between 0.8 and 1.2 °C (1.4 and 2.2 °F) since preindustrial times, and most of the warming over the second half of the 20th century could be attributed to human activities.

AR6 produced a series of global climate predictions based on modeling five greenhouse gas emission scenarios that accounted for future emissions, mitigation (severity reduction) measures, and uncertainties in the model projections. Some of the main uncertainties include the precise role of feedback processes and the impacts of industrial pollutants known as aerosols , which may offset some warming. The lowest-emissions scenario, which assumed steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2015, predicted that the global mean surface temperature would increase between 1.0 and 1.8 °C (1.8 and 3.2 °F) by 2100 relative to the 1850–1900 average. This range stood in stark contrast to the highest-emissions scenario, which predicted that the mean surface temperature would rise between 3.3 and 5.7 °C (5.9 and 10.2 °F) by 2100 based on the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions would continue to increase throughout the 21st century. The intermediate-emissions scenario, which assumed that emissions would stabilize by 2050 before declining gradually, projected an increase of between 2.1 and 3.5 °C (3.8 and 6.3 °F) by 2100.

Many climate scientists agree that significant societal, economic, and ecological damage would result if the global average temperature rose by more than 2 °C (3.6 °F) in such a short time. Such damage would include increased extinction of many plant and animal species, shifts in patterns of agriculture , and rising sea levels. By 2015 all but a few national governments had begun the process of instituting carbon reduction plans as part of the Paris Agreement , a treaty designed to help countries keep global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels in order to avoid the worst of the predicted effects. Whereas authors of the 2018 special report noted that should carbon emissions continue at their present rate, the increase in average near-surface air temperature would reach 1.5 °C sometime between 2030 and 2052, authors of the AR6 report suggested that this threshold would be reached by 2041 at the latest.

The AR6 report also noted that the global average sea level had risen by some 20 cm (7.9 inches) between 1901 and 2018 and that sea level rose faster in the second half of the 20th century than in the first half. It also predicted, again depending on a wide range of scenarios, that the global average sea level would rise by different amounts by 2100 relative to the 1995–2014 average. Under the report’s lowest-emission scenario, sea level would rise by 28–55 cm (11–21.7 inches), whereas, under the intermediate emissions scenario, sea level would rise by 44–76 cm (17.3–29.9 inches). The highest-emissions scenario suggested that sea level would rise by 63–101 cm (24.8–39.8 inches) by 2100.

The scenarios referred to above depend mainly on future concentrations of certain trace gases, called greenhouse gases , that have been injected into the lower atmosphere in increasing amounts through the burning of fossil fuels for industry, transportation , and residential uses. Modern global warming is the result of an increase in magnitude of the so-called greenhouse effect , a warming of Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere caused by the presence of water vapour , carbon dioxide , methane , nitrous oxides , and other greenhouse gases. In 2014 the IPCC first reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere surpassed those found in ice cores dating back 800,000 years.

Of all these gases, carbon dioxide is the most important, both for its role in the greenhouse effect and for its role in the human economy. It has been estimated that, at the beginning of the industrial age in the mid-18th century, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). By the end of 2022 they had risen to 419 ppm, and, if fossil fuels continue to be burned at current rates, they are projected to reach 550 ppm by the mid-21st century—essentially, a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in 300 years.

A vigorous debate is in progress over the extent and seriousness of rising surface temperatures, the effects of past and future warming on human life, and the need for action to reduce future warming and deal with its consequences. This article provides an overview of the scientific background related to the subject of global warming. It considers the causes of rising near-surface air temperatures, the influencing factors, the process of climate research and forecasting, and the possible ecological and social impacts of rising temperatures. For an overview of the public policy developments related to global warming occurring since the mid-20th century, see global warming policy . For a detailed description of Earth’s climate, its processes, and the responses of living things to its changing nature, see climate . For additional background on how Earth’s climate has changed throughout geologic time , see climatic variation and change . For a full description of Earth’s gaseous envelope, within which climate change and global warming occur, see atmosphere .

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Causes and Effects of Climate Change

Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun’s heat. This leads to global warming and climate change. The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history. Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth. 

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Climate change: a threat to human wellbeing and health of the planet. taking action now can secure our future.

BERLIN, Feb 28 – Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released today.

“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC. “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.”

The world faces unavoidable multiple climate hazards over the next two decades with global warming of 1.5°C (2.7°F). Even temporarily exceeding this warming level will result in additional severe impacts, some of which will be irreversible. Risks for society will increase, including to infrastructure and low-lying coastal settlements.

The Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC Working Group II report,  Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability was approved on Sunday, February 27 2022, by 195 member governments of the IPCC, through a virtual approval session that was held over two weeks starting on February 14.

Urgent action required to deal with increasing risks

Increased heatwaves, droughts and floods are already exceeding plants’ and animals’ tolerance thresholds, driving mass mortalities in species such as trees and corals. These weather extremes are occurring simultaneously, causing cascading impacts that are increasingly difficult to manage. They have exposed millions of people to acute food and water insecurity, especially in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, on Small Islands and in the Arctic.

To avoid mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure, ambitious, accelerated action is required to adapt to climate change, at the same time as making rapid, deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. So far, progress on adaptation is uneven and there are increasing gaps between action taken and what is needed to deal with the increasing risks, the new report finds. These gaps are largest among lower-income populations. 

The Working Group II report is the second instalment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which will be completed this year.

“This report recognizes the interdependence of climate, biodiversity and people and integrates natural, social and economic sciences more strongly than earlier IPCC assessments,” said Hoesung Lee. “It emphasizes the urgency of immediate and more ambitious action to address climate risks. Half measures are no longer an option.”

Safeguarding and strengthening nature is key to securing a liveable future

There are options to adapt to a changing climate. This report provides new insights into nature’s potential not only to reduce climate risks but also to improve people’s lives.

“Healthy ecosystems are more resilient to climate change and provide life-critical services such as food and clean water”, said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Hans-Otto Pörtner. “By restoring degraded ecosystems and effectively and equitably conserving 30 to 50 per cent of Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean habitats, society can benefit from nature’s capacity to absorb and store carbon, and we can accelerate progress towards sustainable development, but adequate finance and political support are essential.”

Scientists point out that climate change interacts with global trends such as unsustainable use of natural resources, growing urbanization, social inequalities, losses and damages from extreme events and a pandemic, jeopardizing future development.

“Our assessment clearly shows that tackling all these different challenges involves everyone – governments, the private sector, civil society – working together to prioritize risk reduction, as well as equity and justice, in decision-making and investment,” said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Debra Roberts.

“In this way, different interests, values and world views can be reconciled. By bringing together scientific and technological know-how as well as Indigenous and local knowledge, solutions will be more effective. Failure to achieve climate resilient and sustainable development will result in a sub-optimal future for people and nature.”

Cities: Hotspots of impacts and risks, but also a crucial part of the solution

This report provides a detailed assessment of climate change impacts, risks and adaptation in cities, where more than half the world’s population lives. People’s health, lives and livelihoods, as well as property and critical infrastructure, including energy and transportation systems, are being increasingly adversely affected by hazards from heatwaves, storms, drought and flooding as well as slow-onset changes, including sea level rise.

“Together, growing urbanization and climate change create complex risks, especially for those cities that already experience poorly planned urban growth, high levels of poverty and unemployment, and a lack of basic services,” Debra Roberts said.

“But cities also provide opportunities for climate action – green buildings, reliable supplies of clean water and renewable energy, and sustainable transport systems that connect urban and rural areas can all lead to a more inclusive, fairer society.”

There is increasing evidence of adaptation that has caused unintended consequences, for example destroying nature, putting peoples’ lives at risk or increasing greenhouse gas emissions. This can be avoided by involving everyone in planning, attention to equity and justice, and drawing on Indigenous and local knowledge.

A narrowing window for action

Climate change is a global challenge that requires local solutions and that’s why the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) provides extensive regional information to enable Climate Resilient Development.

The report clearly states Climate Resilient Development is already challenging at current warming levels. It will become more limited if global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F). In some regions it will be impossible if global warming exceeds 2°C (3.6°F). This key finding underlines the urgency for climate action, focusing on equity and justice. Adequate funding, technology transfer, political commitment and partnership lead to more effective climate change adaptation and emissions reductions.

“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner.

For more information, please contact:

IPCC Press Office, Email: [email protected]   IPCC Working Group II:  Sina Löschke,  Komila Nabiyeva: [email protected]

Notes for Editors

Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The Working Group II report examines the impacts of climate change on nature and people around the globe. It explores future impacts at different levels of warming and the resulting risks and offers options to strengthen nature’s and society’s resilience to ongoing climate change, to fight hunger, poverty, and inequality and keep Earth a place worth living on – for current as well as for future generations. 

Working Group II introduces several new components in its latest report: One is a special section on climate change impacts, risks and options to act for cities and settlements by the sea, tropical forests, mountains, biodiversity hotspots, dryland and deserts, the Mediterranean as well as the polar regions. Another is an atlas that will present data and findings on observed and projected climate change impacts and risks from global to regional scales, thus offering even more insights for decision makers.

The Summary for Policymakers of the Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) as well as additional materials and information are available at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

Note : Originally scheduled for release in September 2021, the report was delayed for several months by the COVID-19 pandemic, as work in the scientific community including the IPCC shifted online. This is the second time that the IPCC has conducted a virtual approval session for one of its reports.

AR6 Working Group II in numbers

270 authors from 67 countries

• 47 – coordinating authors
• 184 – lead authors
• 39 – review editors
• 675 – contributing authors

Over 34,000 cited references

A total of 62,418 expert and government review comments

(First Order Draft 16,348; Second Order Draft 40,293; Final Government Distribution: 5,777)

More information about the Sixth Assessment Report can be found  here .

Additional media resources

Assets available after the embargo is lifted on Media Essentials website .

Press conference recording, collection of sound bites from WGII authors, link to presentation slides, B-roll of approval session, link to launch Trello board including press release and video trailer in UN languages, a social media pack.

The website includes  outreach materials  such as videos about the IPCC and video recordings from  outreach events  conducted as webinars or live-streamed events.

Most videos published by the IPCC can be found on our  YouTube  channel. Credit for artwork

About the IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide political leaders with periodic scientific assessments concerning climate change, its implications and risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation strategies. In the same year the UN General Assembly endorsed the action by the WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC. It has 195 member states.

Thousands of people from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC. For the assessment reports, IPCC scientists volunteer their time to assess the thousands of scientific papers published each year to provide a comprehensive summary of what is known about the drivers of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks.

The IPCC has three working groups:  Working Group I , dealing with the physical science basis of climate change;  Working Group II , dealing with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and  Working Group III , dealing with the mitigation of climate change. It also has a  Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories  that develops methodologies for measuring emissions and removals. As part of the IPCC, a Task Group on Data Support for Climate Change Assessments (TG-Data) provides guidance to the Data Distribution Centre (DDC) on curation, traceability, stability, availability and transparency of data and scenarios related to the reports of the IPCC.

IPCC assessments provide governments, at all levels, with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC assessments are a key input into the international negotiations to tackle climate change. IPCC reports are drafted and reviewed in several stages, thus guaranteeing objectivity and transparency. An IPCC assessment report consists of the contributions of the three working groups and a Synthesis Report. The Synthesis Report integrates the findings of the three working group reports and of any special reports prepared in that assessment cycle.

About the Sixth Assessment Cycle

At its 41st Session in February 2015, the IPCC decided to produce a Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). At its 42nd Session in October 2015 it elected a new Bureau that would oversee the work on this report and the Special Reports to be produced in the assessment cycle.

Global Warming of 1.5°C , an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty  was launched in October 2018.

Climate Change and Land , an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems  was launched in August 2019, and the  Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate  was released in September 2019.

In May 2019 the IPCC released the  2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories , an update to the methodology used by governments to estimate their greenhouse gas emissions and removals.

In August 2021 the IPCC released the Working Group I contribution to the AR6, Climate Change 2021, the Physical Science Basis

The Working Group III contribution to the AR6 is scheduled for early April 2022.

The Synthesis Report of the Sixth Assessment Report will be completed in the second half of 2022.

For more information go to  www.ipcc.ch

Related Content

Remarks by the ipcc chair during the press conference to present the working group ii contribution to the sixth assessment report.

Monday, 28 February 2022 Distinguished representatives of the media, WMO Secretary-General Petteri, UNEP Executive Director Andersen, We have just heard …

February 2022

Fifty-fifth session of the ipcc (ipcc-55) and twelfth session of working group ii (wgii-12), february 14, 2022, working group report, ar6 climate change 2022: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.

Science News

Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Century of Science: Theme

Our climate change crisis

The climate change emergency.

Even in a world increasingly battered by weather extremes, the summer 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest stood out. For several days in late June, cities such as Vancouver, Portland and Seattle baked in record temperatures that killed hundreds of people. On June 29 Lytton, a village in British Columbia, set an all-time heat record for Canada, at 121° Fahrenheit (49.6° Celsius); the next day, the village was incinerated by a wildfire.

Within a week, an international group of scientists had analyzed this extreme heat and concluded it would have been virtually impossible without climate change caused by humans. The planet’s average surface temperature has risen by at least 1.1 degree Celsius since preindustrial levels of 1850–1900 — because people are loading the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases produced during the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, and from cutting down forests.

A little over 1 degree of warming may not sound like a lot. But it has already been enough to fundamentally transform how energy flows around the planet. The pace of change is accelerating, and the consequences are everywhere. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting, raising sea levels and flooding low-lying island nations and coastal cities. Drought is parching farmlands and the rivers that feed them. Wildfires are raging. Rains are becoming more intense, and weather patterns are shifting .

The roots of understanding this climate emergency trace back more than a century and a half. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that scientists began the detailed measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide that would prove how much carbon is pouring from human activities. Beginning in the 1960s, researchers began developing comprehensive computer models that now illuminate the severity of the changes ahead.

Global average temperature change, 1850–2021

Long-term climate datasets show that Earth’s average surface temperature (combined land and ocean) has increased by more than 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times. Temperature change is the difference from the 1850–1900 average.

Today we know that climate change and its consequences are real, and we are responsible. The emissions that people have been putting into the air for centuries — the emissions that made long-distance travel, economic growth and our material lives possible — have put us squarely on a warming trajectory . Only drastic cuts in carbon emissions, backed by collective global will, can make a significant difference.

“What’s happening to the planet is not routine,” says Ralph Keeling, a geochemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. “We’re in a planetary crisis.” — Alexandra Witze

Tracking a Greenland glacier

The calving front of Greenland’s Helheim Glacier, which flows toward the sea where it crumbles into icebergs, held roughly the same position from the 1970s until 2001 (left, the calving front is to the far right of the image). But by 2005 (right), it had retreated 7.5 kilometers toward its source. 

The first climate scientists

One day in the 1850s, Eunice Newton Foote, an amateur scientist and women’s rights activist living in upstate New York, put two glass jars in sunlight. One contained regular air — a mix of nitrogen, oxygen and other gases including carbon dioxide — while the other contained just CO 2 . Both had thermometers in them. As the sun’s rays beat down, Foote observed that the jar of CO 2 alone heated more quickly, and was slower to cool, than the one containing plain air.

The results prompted Foote to muse on the relationship between CO 2 , the planet and heat. “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature,” she wrote in an 1856 paper summarizing her findings .

Three years later, working independently and apparently unaware of Foote’s discovery, Irish physicist John Tyndall showed the same basic idea in more detail. With a set of pipes and devices to study the transmission of heat, he found that CO 2 gas, as well as water vapor, absorbed more heat than air alone. He argued that such gases would trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere, much as panes of glass trap heat in a greenhouse, and thus modulate climate. “As a dam built across a river causes a local deepening of the stream, so our atmosphere, thrown as a barrier across the terrestrial rays, produces a local heightening of the temperature at the Earth’s surface,” he wrote in 1862.

Today Tyndall is widely credited with the discovery of how what are now called greenhouse gases heat the planet, earning him a prominent place in the history of climate science. Foote faded into relative obscurity — partly because of her gender, partly because her measurements were less sensitive. Yet their findings helped kick off broader scientific exploration of how the composition of gases in Earth’s atmosphere affects global temperatures.

Carbon floods in

Humans began substantially affecting the atmosphere around the turn of the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution took off in Britain. Factories burned tons of coal; fueled by fossil fuels, the steam engine revolutionized transportation and other industries. In the decades since, fossil fuels including oil and natural gas have been harnessed to drive a global economy. All these activities belch gases into the air.

Yet Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist, wasn’t worried about the Industrial Revolution when he began thinking in the late 1800s about changes in atmospheric CO 2 levels. He was instead curious about ice ages — including whether a decrease in volcanic eruptions, which can put CO 2 into the atmosphere, would lead to a future ice age. Bored and lonely in the wake of a divorce, Arrhenius set himself to months of laborious calculations involving moisture and heat transport in the atmosphere at different zones of latitude. In 1896 he reported that halving the amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere could indeed bring about an ice age — and that doubling CO 2 would raise global temperatures by around 5 to 6 degrees C.

It was a remarkably prescient finding for work that, out of necessity, had simplified Earth’s complex climate system down to just a few variables. Today, estimates for how much the planet will warm through a doubling of CO 2 — a measure known as climate sensitivity — range between 1.5 degrees and 4.5 degrees Celsius. (The range remains broad in part because scientists now incorporate their understanding of many more planetary feedbacks than were recognized in Arrhenius’ day.)  

But Arrhenius’ findings didn’t gain much traction with other scientists at the time. The climate system seemed too large, complex and inert to change in any meaningful way on a timescale that would be relevant to human society. Geologic evidence showed, for instance, that ice ages took thousands of years to start and end. What was there to worry about? And other laboratory experiments — later shown to be flawed — appeared to indicate that changing levels of CO 2 would have little impact on heat absorption in the atmosphere. Most scientists aware of the work came to believe that Arrhenius had been proved wrong.

One researcher, though, thought the idea was worth pursuing. Guy Stewart Callendar, a British engineer and amateur meteorologist, had tallied weather records over time, obsessively enough to determine that average temperatures were increasing at 147 weather stations around the globe. In 1938, in a paper in a Royal Meteorological Society journal , he linked this temperature rise to the burning of fossil fuels. Callendar estimated that fossil fuel burning had put around 150 billion metric tons of CO 2 into the atmosphere since the late 19th century.

Like many of his day, Callendar didn’t see global warming as a problem. Extra CO 2 would surely stimulate plants to grow and allow crops to be farmed in new regions. “In any case the return of the deadly glaciers should be delayed indefinitely,” he wrote. But his work revived discussions tracing back to Tyndall and Arrhenius about how the planetary system responds to changing levels of gases in the atmosphere. And it began steering the conversation toward how human activities might drive those changes.

When World War II broke out the following year, the global conflict redrew the landscape for scientific research. Hugely important wartime technologies, such as radar and the atomic bomb, set the stage for “big science” studies that brought nations together to tackle high-stakes questions of global reach. And that allowed modern climate science to emerge.

The Keeling curve and climate change

One major postwar effort was the International Geophysical Year, an 18-month push in 1957–1958 that involved a wide array of scientific field campaigns including exploration in the Arctic and Antarctica. Climate change wasn’t a high research priority during the IGY, but some scientists in California, led by Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, used the funding influx to begin a project they’d long wanted to do. The goal was to measure CO 2 levels at different locations around the world, accurately and consistently.

The job fell to geochemist Charles David Keeling, who put ultraprecise CO 2 monitors in Antarctica and on the Hawaiian volcano of Mauna Loa. Funds soon ran out to maintain the Antarctic record, but the Mauna Loa measurements continued. Thus was born one of the most iconic datasets in all of science — the “Keeling curve,” which tracks the rise of atmospheric CO 2 . When Keeling began his measurements in 1958, CO 2 made up 315 parts per million of the global atmosphere. Within just a few years it became clear that the number was increasing year by year. Because plants take up CO 2 as they grow in spring and summer and release it as they decompose in fall and winter, CO 2 concentrations rose and fell each year in a sawtooth pattern — but superimposed on that pattern was a steady march upward.  

Monthly average CO 2 concentrations at Mauna Loa Observatory

Atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements collected continuously since 1958 at Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii show the rise due to human activities. The visible sawtooth pattern is due to seasonal plant growth: Plants take up CO 2 in the growing seasons, then release it as they decompose in fall and winter.

“The graph got flashed all over the place — it was just such a striking image,” says Ralph Keeling, who is Charles David Keeling’s son. Over the years, as the curve marched higher, “it had a really important role historically in waking people up to the problem of climate change.” The Keeling curve has been featured in countless earth science textbooks, congressional hearings and in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth . Each year the curve keeps going up: In 2016 it passed 400 ppm of CO 2 in the atmosphere, as measured during its typical annual minimum in September. In 2021, the annual minimum was 413 ppm. (Before the Industrial Revolution, CO 2 levels in the atmosphere had been stable for centuries at around 280 ppm.)

Around the time that Keeling’s measurements were kicking off, Revelle also helped develop an important argument that the CO 2 from human activities was building up in Earth’s atmosphere. In 1957 he and Hans Suess, also at Scripps at the time, published a paper that traced the flow of radioactive carbon through the oceans and the atmosphere. They showed that the oceans were not capable of taking up as much CO 2 as previously thought; the implication was that much of the gas must be going into the atmosphere instead. “Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future,” Revelle and Suess wrote in the paper. It’s one of the most famous sentences in earth science history.

“Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future.”

Here was the insight underlying modern climate science: Atmosheric CO 2 is increasing, and humans are causing the buildup. Revelle and Suess became the final piece in a puzzle dating back to Svante Arrhenius and John Tyndall.

“I tell my students that to understand the basics of climate change, you need to have the cutting-edge science of the 1860s, the cutting-edge math of the 1890s and the cutting-edge chemistry of the 1950s,” says Joshua Howe, an environmental historian at Reed College in Portland, Ore.

Environmental awareness grows

As this scientific picture began to emerge in the late 1950s, Science News was on the story. A March 1, 1958 article in Science News Letter , “Weather May Be Warming,” described a warm winter month in the Northern Hemisphere. It posits three theories, including that “carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere by a booming industrial civilization could have caused the increase. By burning up about 100 billion tons of coal and oil since 1900, man himself may be changing the climate.” By 1972, the magazine was reporting on efforts to expand global atmospheric greenhouse gas monitoring beyond Keeling’s work; two years later, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched its own CO 2 monitoring network, now the biggest in the world.

Environmental awareness on other issues grew in the 1960s and 1970s. Rachel Carson catalyzed the modern U.S. environmental movement in 1962 when she published a magazine series and then a book, Silent Spring , condemning the pesticide DDT for its ecological impacts. 1970 saw the celebration of the first Earth Day , in the United States and elsewhere, and in India in 1973 a group of women led a series of widely publicized protests against deforestation. This Chipko movement explicitly linked environmental protection with protecting human communities, and helped seed other environmental movements.

The fragility of global energy supplies was also becoming more obvious through the 1970s. The United States, heavily dependent on other countries for oil imports, entered a gas shortage in 1973–74 when Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cut off oil supplies because of U.S. government support for Israel. The shortage prompted more people to think about the finiteness of natural resources and the possibility of overtaxing the planet. — Alexandra Witze

Climate change evidence piles up

Observational data collected throughout the second half of the 20th century helped researchers gradually build their understanding of how human activities were transforming the planet. “It was a sort of slow accretion of evidence and concern,” says historian Joshua Howe of Reed College.

Environmental records from the past, such as tree rings and ice cores, established that the current changes in climate are unusual compared with the recent past. Yet such paleoclimatology data also showed that climate has changed quickly in the deep past — driven by triggers other than human activity, but with lessons for how abrupt planetary transformations can be.

Ice cores pulled from ice sheets, such as that atop Greenland, offer some of the most telling insights for understanding past climate change. Each year snow falls atop the ice and compresses into a fresh layer of ice representing climate conditions at the time it formed. The abundance of certain forms, or isotopes, of oxygen and hydrogen in the ice allows scientists to calculate the temperature at which it formed, and air bubbles trapped within the ice reveal how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were in the atmosphere at that time. So drilling down into an ice sheet is like reading the pages of a history book that go back in time the deeper you go.

Scientists began reading these pages in the early 1960s, using ice cores drilled at a U.S. military base in northwest Greenland . Contrary to expectations that past climates were stable, the cores hinted that abrupt climate shifts had happened over the last 100,000 years. By 1979, an international group of researchers was pulling another deep ice core from a second location in Greenland — and it, too, showed that abrupt climate change had occurred in the past. In the late 1980s and early 1990s a pair of European- and U.S.-led drilling projects retrieved even deeper cores from near the top of the ice sheet, pushing the record of past temperatures back a quarter of a million years.

Together with other sources of information, such as sediment cores drilled from the seafloor and molecules preserved in ancient rocks, the ice cores allowed scientists to reconstruct past temperature changes in extraordinary detail. Many of those changes happened alarmingly fast. For instance, the climate in Greenland warmed abruptly more than 20 times in the last 80,000 years, with the changes occurring in a matter of decades. More recently, a cold spell that set in around 13,000 years ago suddenly came to an end around 11,500 years ago — and temperatures in Greenland rose 10 degrees Celsius in a decade.

Evidence for such dramatic climate shifts laid to rest any lingering ideas that global climate change would be slow and unlikely to occur on a timescale that humans should worry about. “It’s an important reminder of how ‘tippy’ things can be,” says Jessica Tierney, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

More evidence of global change came from Earth-observing satellites, which brought a new planet-wide perspective on global warming beginning in the 1960s. From their viewpoint in the sky, satellites have measured the steady rise in global sea level — currently 3.4 millimeters per year and accelerating, as warming water expands and as ice sheets melt — as well as the rapid decline in ice left floating on the Arctic Ocean each summer at the end of the melt season. Gravity-sensing satellites have ‘weighed’ the Antarctic and Greenlandic ice sheets from above since 2002, reporting that more than 400 billion metric tons of ice are lost each year.

Temperature observations taken at weather stations around the world also confirm that we are living in the hottest years on record. The 10 warmest years since record keeping began in 1880 have all occurred since 2005. And nine of those 10 have come since 2010.

What’s more, extreme weather is hammering the planet more and more frequently. That 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, for instance, is just a harbinger of what’s to come. — Alexandra Witze

Worrisome predictions from climate models

By the 1960s, there was no denying that the planet was warming. But understanding the consequences of those changes — including the threat to human health and well-being — would require more than observational data. Looking to the future depended on computer simulations: complex calculations of how energy flows through the planetary system. Such models of the climate system have been crucial to developing projections for what we can expect from greenhouse warming.

A first step in building climate models was to connect everyday observations of weather to the concept of forecasting future climate. During World War I, the British mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson imagined tens of thousands of meteorologists working to forecast the weather, each calculating conditions for a small part of the atmosphere but collectively piecing together a global forecast. Richardson published his work in 1922, to reviews that called the idea “of almost quixotic boldness.”

But it wasn’t until after World War II that computational power turned Richardson’s dream into reality. In the wake of the Allied victory, which relied on accurate weather forecasts for everything from planning D-Day to figuring out when and where to drop the atomic bombs, leading U.S. mathematicians acquired funding from the federal government to improve predictions. In 1950 a team led by Jule Charney, a meteorologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., used the ENIAC, the first general-purpose, programmable electronic computer, to produce the first computer-driven regional weather forecast . The forecasting was slow and rudimentary, but it built on Richardson’s ideas of dividing the atmosphere into squares, or cells, and computing the weather for each of those. With the obscure title “Numerical integration of the barotropic vorticity equation,” the paper reporting the results set the stage for decades of climate modeling to follow.

By 1956 Norman Phillips, a member of Charney’s team, had produced the world’s first general circulation model, which captured how energy flows between the oceans, atmosphere and land. Phillips ran the calculations on a computer with just 5 kilobytes of memory, yet it was able to reproduce monthly and seasonal patterns in the lower atmosphere. That meant scientists could begin developing more realistic models of how the planet responds to factors such as increasing levels of greenhouse gases. The field of climate modeling was born.

The work was basic at first, because early computers simply didn’t have much computational power to simulate all aspects of the planetary system. “People thought that it was stupid to try to study this greenhouse-warming issue by three-dimensional model[s], because it cost so much computer time,” meteorologist Syukuro Manabe told physics historian Spencer Weart in a 1989 oral history .

Climate models have predicted how much ice the Ilulissat region of the Greenland ice sheet might lose by 2300 based on different scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions. The models are compared to 2008 (first image). In a best-case scenario, in which emissions peak by mid-century, the speed at which the glacier is sending ice out into the ocean is much lower (second image) than with a worst-case scenario, in which emissions rise at a high rate (third image).

An important breakthrough came in 1967, when Manabe and Richard Wetherald — both at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, a lab born from Charney’s group — published a paper in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences that modeled connections between Earth’s surface and atmosphere and calculated how changes in carbon dioxide would affect the planet’s temperature. Manabe and Wetherald were the first to build a computer model that captured the relevant processes that drive climate , and to accurately simulate how the Earth responds to those processes. (Manabe shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on climate modeling; Wetherald died in 2011.)

The rise of climate modeling allowed scientists to more accurately envision the impacts of global warming. In 1979, Charney and other experts met in Woods Hole, Mass., to try to put together a scientific consensus on what increasing levels of CO 2 would mean for the planet. They analyzed climate models from Manabe and from James Hansen of NASA. The resulting “Charney report” concluded that rising CO 2 in the atmosphere would lead to additional and significant climate change. The ocean might take up much of that heat, the scientists wrote — but “it appears that the warming will eventually occur, and the associated regional climatic changes so important to the assessment of socioeconomic consequence may well be significant.”

In the decades since, climate modeling has gotten increasingly sophisticated . Scientists have drawn up a variety of scenarios for how carbon emissions might change in the future, depending on the stringency of emissions cuts. Modelers use those scenarios to project how climate and weather will change around the globe, from hotter croplands in China to melting glaciers in the Himalayas. Climate simulations have also allowed researchers to identify the fingerprints of human impacts on extreme weather that is already happening, by comparing scenarios that include the influence of human activities with those that do not.

And as climate science firmed up and the most dramatic consequences became clear, the political battles raged. — Alexandra Witze

Climate science meets politics

With the development of climate science tracing back to the early Cold War, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the science of global warming became enmeshed in broader societal and political battles. A complex stew of political, national and business interests mired society in debates about the reality of climate change, and what to do about it, decades after the science became clear that humans are fundamentally altering the planet’s atmosphere.

Society has pulled itself together before to deal with global environmental problems, such as the Antarctic ozone hole. In 1974 chemists Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland, both of the University of California, Irvine, reported that chlorofluorocarbon chemicals, used in products such as spray cans and refrigerants, caused a chain of reactions that gnawed away at the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer . The resulting ozone hole, which forms over Antarctica every spring, allows more ultraviolet radiation from the sun to make it through Earth’s atmosphere and reach the surface, where it can cause skin cancer and eye damage.

Governments ultimately worked under the auspices of the United Nations to craft the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which strictly limited the manufacture of chlorofluorocarbons . In the years following, the ozone hole began to heal. But fighting climate change would prove to be far more challenging. Chlorofluorocarbons were a suite of chemicals with relatively limited use and for which replacements could be found without too much trouble. But the greenhouse gases that cause global warming stem from a wide variety of human activities, from energy development to deforestation. And transforming entire energy sectors to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions is much more difficult than replacing a set of industrial chemicals.

In 1980, though, researchers took an important step toward banding together to synthesize the scientific understanding of climate change and bring it to the attention of international policy makers. It started at a small scientific conference in Villach, Austria. There, experts met under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization, the International Council of Scientific Unions and the United Nations Environment Program to discuss the seriousness of climate change. On the train ride home from the meeting, Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin talked with other participants about how a broader, deeper and more international analysis was needed. In 1985, a second conference was held at Villach to highlight the urgency, and in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, was born. Bolin was its first chairperson.

The IPCC became a highly influential and unique body. It performs no original scientific research; instead, it synthesizes and summarizes the vast literature of climate science for policy makers to consider — primarily through massive reports issued every couple of years. The first IPCC report , in 1990, predicted that the planet’s global mean temperature would rise more quickly in the following century than at any point in the last 10,000 years, due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Successive IPCC reports showed more and more confidence in the link between greenhouse emissions and rising global temperatures — and explored how society might mitigate and adapt to coming changes.

IPCC reports have played a key role in providing scientific information for nations discussing how to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. This process started with the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 , which resulted in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Annual U.N. meetings to tackle climate change led to the first international commitments to reduce emissions, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Under it, developed countries committed to reduce emissions of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases. By 2007 the IPCC declared that the reality of climate warming is “unequivocal ”; the group received the Nobel Peace Prize that year along with Al Gore for their work on climate change.

The IPCC process ensured that policy makers had the best science at hand when they came to the table to discuss cutting emissions. “If you go back and look at the original U.N. framework on climate change, already you see the core of the science represented there,” says Rachel Cleetus, a climate policy expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass. Of course, nations did not have to abide by that science — and they often didn’t.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, international climate meetings discussed less hard-core science and more issues of equity. Countries such as China and India pointed out that they needed energy to develop their economies, and that nations responsible for the bulk of emissions through history, such as the United States, needed to lead the way in cutting greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, residents of some of the most vulnerable nations, such as low-lying islands that are threatened by sea level rise, gained visibility and clout at international negotiating forums. “The issues around equity have always been very uniquely challenging in this collective action problem,” says Cleetus.

By 2015, the world’s nations had made some progress on the emissions cuts laid out in the Kyoto Protocol, but it was still not enough to achieve substantial global reductions. That year, a key U.N. climate conference in Paris produced an international agreement to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees C , and preferably 1.5 degrees C, above preindustrial levels.

Every country has its own approach to the challenge of addressing climate change. In the United States, which gets approximately 80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels, sophisticated efforts to downplay and critique the science led to major delays in climate action. For decades U.S. fossil fuel companies such as ExxonMobil worked to influence politicians to take as little action on emissions reductions as possible. Working with a small group of influential scientists, this well-funded, well-orchestrated campaign took many of its tactics from earlier tobacco-industry efforts to cast doubt on the links between smoking and cancer, as historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway documented in their book Merchants of Doubt.

Perhaps the peak of U.S. climate denialism came in the late 1980s and into the 1990s — roughly a century after Swedish physical chemist Svante Arrhenius laid out the consequences of putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In 1988 NASA scientist James Hansen testified to lawmakers about the consequences of global warming. “It is already happening now,” Hansen said, summarizing what scientists had long known.

The high-profile nature of Hansen’s testimony, combined with his NASA expertise, vaulted global warming into the public eye in the United States like never before. “It really hit home with a public who could understand that there are reasons that Venus is hot and Mars is cold,” says Joshua Howe, a historian at Reed College. “And that if you use that same reasoning, we have some concerns about what is happening here on Earth.” But Hansen also kicked off a series of bitter public battles about the reality of human-caused climate change that raged for years.        

One common approach of climate skeptics was to attack the environmental data and models that underlie climate science. In 1998, scientist Michael Mann, then at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, and colleagues published a detailed temperature record that formed the basis of what came to be known as the “hockey stick” graph, so named because the chart showed a sharp rise in temperatures (the hockey blade) at the end of a long, much flatter period (the hockey stick). Skeptics soon demanded the data and software processing tools Mann used to create the graph. Bloggers and self-proclaimed citizen scientists created a cottage industry of questioning new climate science papers under the guise of “audits.” In 2009 hackers broke into a server at the University of East Anglia, a leading climate-research hub in Norwich, England, and released more than 1,000 e-mails between climate scientists. This “Climategate” scandal purported to reveal misconduct on the part of the researchers, but several reviews largely exonerated the scientists.  

The graph that launched climate skeptic attacks

This famous graph, produced by scientist Michael Mann and colleagues, and then reproduced in a 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, dramatically captures temperature change over time. Climate change skeptics made it the center of an all-out attack on climate science.

Such tactics undoubtedly succeeded in feeding politicians’ delay on climate action in the United States, most of it from Republicans. President George W. Bush withdrew the country from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 ; Donald Trump similarly rejected the Paris accord in 2017 . As late as 2015, the chair of the Senate’s environment committee, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, brought a snowball into Congress on a cold winter’s day in order to continue his argument that human-caused global warming is a “hoax.” In Australia, a similar mix of right-wing denialism and fossil fuel interests has kept climate change commitments in flux, as prime ministers are voted in and out over fierce debates about how the nation should act on climate.

Yet other nations have moved forward. Some European countries such as Germany aggressively pursued renewable energies, such as wind and solar, while activists such as the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg — the vanguard of a youth-action movement — pressured their governments for more.

In recent years the developing economies of China and India have taken center stage in discussions about climate action. Both nations argue that they must be allowed extra time to wean themselves off fossil fuels in order to continue economic growth. They note that historically speaking, the United States is the largest total emitter of carbon by far.

Total carbon dioxide emissions by country, 1850–2021

These 20 nations have emitted the largest cumulative amounts of carbon dioxide since 1850. Emissions are shown in in billions of metric tons and are broken down into subtotals from fossil fuel use and cement manufacturing (blue) as well as from land use and forestry (green).

China, whose annual CO 2 emissions surpassed those of the United States in 2006, declared several moderate steps in 2021 to reduce emissions, including that it would stop building coal-burning power plants overseas. India announced it would aim for net-zero emissions by 2070, the first time it has set a date for this goal.

Yet such pledges continue to be criticized. At the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, India was globally criticized for not committing to a complete phaseout of coal — although the two top emitters, China and the United States, have not themselves committed to phasing out coal. “There is no equity in this,” says Aayushi Awasthy, an energy economist at the University of East Anglia. — Alexandra Witze

Facing a warmer future

Climate change creeps up gradually on society, except when it doesn’t. The slow increase in sea level, for instance, causes waters to lap incrementally higher at shorelines year after year. But when a big storm comes along — which may be happening more frequently due to climate change — the consequences become much more obvious. Storm surge rapidly swamps communities and wreaks disproportionate havoc. That’s why New York City installed floodgates in its subway and tunnel system in the wake of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy , and why the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu has asked Australia and New Zealand to be prepared to take in refugees fleeing from rising sea levels.

The list of climate impacts goes on and on — and in many cases, changes are coming faster than scientists had envisioned a few decades ago. The oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb carbon dioxide, harming tiny marine organisms that build protective calcium carbonate shells and are the base of the marine food web. Warmer waters are bleaching coral reefs. Higher temperatures are driving animal and plant species into areas in which they previously did not live, increasing the risk of extinction for many. “It’s no longer about impacts in the future,” says Rachel Cleetus, a climate policy expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s about what’s happening in the U.S. here and now, and around the world.”

No place on the planet is unaffected. In many areas, higher temperatures have led to major droughts, which dry out vegetation and provide additional fuel for wildfires such as those that have devastated Australia , the Mediterranean and western North America in recent years. The Colorado River , the source of water for tens of millions of people in the western United States , came under a water-shortage alert in 2021 for the first time in history.

Then there’s the Arctic, where temperatures are rising at more than twice the global average and communities are at the forefront of change. Permafrost is thawing, destabilizing buildings, pipelines and roads. Caribou and reindeer herders worry about the increased risk of parasites to the health of their animals. With less sea ice available to buffer the coast from storm erosion, the Inupiat village of Shishmaref, Alaska, risks crumbling into the sea. It will need to move from its sand-barrier island to the mainland .

“We know these changes are happening and that the Titanic is sinking,” says Louise Farquharson, a geomorphologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks who monitors permafrost and coastal change around Alaska. Like many Arctic scientists, she is working with Indigenous communities to understand the shifts they’re experiencing and what can be done when buildings start to slump and water supplies start to drain away. “A big part is just listening to community members and understanding what they’re seeing change,” she says.

All around the planet, those who depend on intact ecosystems for their survival face the greatest threat from climate change. And those with the least resources to adapt to climate change are the ones who feel it first .

“We are going to warm,” says Claudia Tebaldi, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “There is no question about it. The only thing that we can hope to do is to warm a little more slowly.”

That’s one reason why the IPCC report released in 2021 focuses on anticipated levels of global warming. There is a big difference between the planet warming 1.5 degrees versus 2 degrees or 2.5 degrees. Consider that we are now at least 1.1 degrees above preindustrial levels of CO 2 and are already seeing dramatic shifts in climate. Given that, keeping further global temperature increases as low as possible will make a big difference in the climate impacts the planet faces. “With every fraction of a degree of warming, everything gets a little more intense,” says paleoclimatologist Jessica Tierney. “There’s no more time to beat around the bush.”

Historical and projected global temperature change

Various scenarios for how greenhouse gas emissions might change going forward help scientists predict future climate change. This graph shows the simulated historical temperature trend along with future projections of global surface temperature based on five scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Temperature change is the difference from the 1850–1900 average.

The future rests on how much nations are willing to commit to cutting emissions and whether they will stick to those commitments. It’s a geopolitical balancing act the likes of which the world has never seen.

Science can and must play a role going forward. Improved climate models will illuminate what changes are expected at the regional scale, helping officials prepare. Governments and industry have crucial parts to play as well. They can invest in technologies, such as carbon sequestration, to help decarbonize the economy and shift society toward more renewable sources of energy. “We can solve these problems — most of the tools are already there,” says Cascade Tuholske, a geographer at Columbia University. “We just have to do it.”

Huge questions remain. Do voters have the will to demand significant energy transitions from their governments? How can business and military leaders play a bigger role in driving climate action? What should be the role of low-carbon energy sources that come with downsides, such as nuclear energy ? How can developing nations achieve a better standard of living for their people while not becoming big greenhouse gas emitters? How can we keep the most vulnerable from being disproportionately harmed during extreme events, and incorporate environmental and social justice into our future?

These questions become more pressing each year, as CO 2 accumulates in our atmosphere. The planet is now at higher levels of CO 2 than at any time in the last 3 million years. Yet Ralph Keeling, keeper of the iconic Mauna Loa record tracking the rise in atmospheric CO 2 , is already optimistically thinking about how scientists would be able to detect a slowdown, should the world actually start cutting emissions by a few percent per year. “That’s what the policy makers want to see — that there’s been some large-scale impact of what they did,” he says.

At the 2021 U.N. climate meeting in Glasgow diplomats from around the world agreed to work more urgently to shift away from using fossil fuels. They did not, however, adopt targets strict enough to keep the world below a warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. It’s been well over a century since Svante Arrhenius recognized the consequences of putting extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and yet world leaders have yet to pull together to avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change.

Time is running out. — Alexandra Witze

Climate change facts

We know that climate change and its consequences are real, and we are responsible. Here’s what the science tells us.

How much has the planet warmed over the past century?

The planet’s average surface temperature has risen by at least 1.1 degree Celsius since preindustrial levels of 1850–1900.

What is causing climate change?

People are loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases produced during the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, and cutting down forests.

What are some of the effects of climate change?

Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting, raising sea levels and flooding low-lying island nations and coastal cities. Drought is parching farmlands and the rivers that feed them. Wildfires are raging. Rains are becoming more intense, and weather patterns are shifting.

What is the greenhouse effect?

In the 19th century, Irish physicist John Tyndall found that carbon dioxide gas, as well as water vapor, absorbed more heat than air alone. He argued that such gases would trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere, much as panes of glass trap heat in a greenhouse, and thus modulate climate.

What is the Keeling curve?

One of the most iconic datasets in all of science, the Keeling curve tracks the rise of atmospheric CO 2 . When geochemist Charles David Keeling began his measurements in 1958 on the Hawaiian volcano of Mauna Loa, CO 2 made up 315 parts per million of the global atmosphere. Each year the curve keeps going up: In 2016 it passed 400 ppm of CO 2 in the atmosphere, as measured during its typical annual minimum in September. In 2021, the annual minimum was 413 ppm.

Does it get hotter every year?

Average global temperatures fluctuate from year to year, but temperature observations taken at weather stations around the world confirm that we are living in the hottest years on record. The 10 warmest years since record keeping began in 1880 have all occurred since 2005. And nine of those 10 have come since 2010.

What countries emit the most carbon dioxide?

The United States has been the largest total emitter of carbon dioxide by far, followed by China and Russia. China’s annual CO 2 emissions surpassed those of the United States in 2006.

What places are impacted by climate change?

No place on the planet is unaffected. Higher temperatures have led to major droughts, providing fuel for wildfires such as those that have devastated Australia , the Mediterranean and western North America in recent years. The Colorado River came under a water-shortage alert in 2021 for the first time in history. In the Arctic, where temperatures are rising at more than twice the global average, permafrost is thawing, destabilizing buildings, pipelines and roads. With less sea ice available to buffer the coast from storm erosion, the Inupiat village of Shishmaref, Alaska, risks crumbling into the sea. All around the planet, those who depend on intact ecosystems for their survival face the greatest threat from climate change. And those with the least resources to adapt to climate change are the ones who feel it first .

Editor’s note: This story was published March 10, 2022.

British mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson (shown at center) proposes forecasting the weather by piecing together the calculations of tens of thousands of meteorologists working on small parts of the atmosphere.

Geochemist Charles David Keeling (shown in 1988) begins tracking the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa in Hawaii. The record, which continues through today, has become one of the most iconic datasets in all of science.

Rachel Carson (shown) publishes the book Silent Spring , raising alarm over the ecological impacts of the pesticide DDT. The book helps catalyze the modern U.S. environmental movement.

The first Earth Day, organized by U.S. senator Gaylord Nelson and graduate student Denis Hayes, is celebrated.

The first Landsat satellite launched (shown), opening the door to continuous monitoring of Earth and its features from above.

A powerful eruption from the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo (shown) ejects millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, temporarily cooling the planet.  

World leaders gathered (shown) at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro to address how to pursue economic development while also protecting the Earth. The meeting resulted in an international convention on climate change.

Activist Greta Thunberg initiates the “School Strike for Climate” movement by protesting outside the Swedish parliament. Soon, students around the world join a growing movement demanding action on climate change . (Activists at the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference are shown.)

From the archive

Climate change foreseen.

In an early mention of climate change in Science News-Letter , the predecessor of Science News , British meteorologist C.E.P. Brooks warns that present warming trends could lead to “important economic and political effects.”

IGY Brings Many Discoveries

Science News Letter lists the Top 8 accomplishments of the International Geophysical Year.

Chilling possibilities

Science News explores the tentative idea that global temperatures are cooling and that a new ice age could be imminent, which is later shown to be inaccurate.

Long Hot Future: Warmer Earth Appears Inevitable

“The planet earth will be a warmer place in the 21st century, and there is no realistic strategy that can prevent the change,” Science News reports.

Ozone and Global Warming: What to Do?

Policy makers discuss how to solve the dual problems of ozone depletion and global warming.

Looking for Mr. Greenhouse

Science writer Richard Monastersky reports on scientists’ efforts to evaluate how to connect increasing greenhouse gases and a warming climate.

World Climate Panel Charts Path for Action

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that “the fingerprint of man in the past temperature record” is now apparent.

Animals on the Move

A warming climate means shifting ranges and ecosystem disruptions for a lot of species, Nancy Ross-Flanigan reports.

Changing climate: 10 years after ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

A decade after former vice president Al Gore releases the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth , Science News looks back at how climate science has advanced.

With nowhere to hide from rising seas, Boston prepares for a wetter future

Mary Caperton Morton reports for Science News on how Boston is taking action to prepare for rising seas.

The new UN climate change report shows there’s no time for denial or delay

Earth & climate writer Carolyn Gramling covers the sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which documents how climate change is already affecting every region on Earth.

Climate change disinformation is evolving. So are efforts to fight back

Researchers are testing games and other ways to help people recognize climate change denial.

Extreme weather in 2022 showed the global impact of climate change

Heat waves, floods, wildfires and drought around the world were exacerbated by Earth’s changing climate.

It’s possible to reach net-zero carbon emissions. Here’s how

Cutting carbon dioxide emissions to curb climate change and reach net zero is possible but not easy.

The last 12 months were the hottest on record

The planet’s average temperature was about 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than the 1850–1900 average, a new report finds.

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• Published: 16 November 2022

Climate change and human behaviour

Nature Human Behaviour volume  6 ,  pages 1441–1442 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Climate change is an immense challenge. Human behaviour is crucial in climate change mitigation, and in tackling the arising consequences. In this joint Focus issue between Nature Climate Change and Nature Human Behaviour , we take a closer look at the role of human behaviour in the climate crisis.

In the late 19th century, the scientist (and suffragette) Eunice Newton Foote published a paper suggesting that a build-up of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere could cause increased surface temperatures 1 . In the mid-20th century, the British engineer Guy Callendar was the first to concretize the link between carbon dioxide levels and global warming 2 . Now, a century and a half after Foote’s work, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that human behaviour is the main driver of climatic changes and global warming.

The negative effects of rising temperatures on the environment, biodiversity and human health are becoming increasingly noticeable. The years 2020 and 2016 were among the hottest since the record keeping of annual surface temperatures began in 1880 (ref. 3 ). Throughout 2022, the globe was plagued by record-breaking heatwaves. Even regions with a naturally warm climate, such as Pakistan or India, experienced some of their hottest days much earlier in the year — very probably a consequence of climate change 4 . According to the National Centers for Environmental Information of the United States, the surface global temperature during the decade leading up to 2020 was +0.82 °C (+1.48 °F) above the 20th-century average 5 . It is clear that we are facing a global crisis that requires urgent action.

During the Climate Change Conference (COP21) of the United Nations in Paris 2015, 196 parties adopted a legally binding treaty with the aim to limit global warming to ideally 1.5 °C and a maximum of 2 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels. A recent report issued by the UN suggests that we are very unlikely to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement. Instead, current policies are likely to cause temperatures to increase up to 2.8 °C this century 6 . The report suggests that to get on track to 2 °C, new pledges would need to be four times higher — and seven times higher to get on track to 1.5 °C. This November, world leaders will meet for the 27th time to coordinate efforts in facing the climate crisis and mitigating the effects during COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

This Focus issue

Human behaviour is not only one of the primary drivers of climate change but also is equally crucial for mitigating the impact of the Anthropocene. In 2022, this was also explicitly acknowledged in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For the first time, the IPCC directly discussed behavioural, social and cultural dynamics in climate change mitigation 7 . This joint Focus highlights some of the aspects of the human factor that are central in the adaptation to and prevention of a warming climate, and the mitigation of negative consequences. It features original pieces, and also includes a curated collection of already published content from across journals in the Nature Portfolio.

Human behaviour is a neglected factor in climate science

In the light of the empirical evidence for the role of human behaviour in climatic changes, it is curious that the ‘human factor’ has not always received much attention in key research areas, such as climate modelling. For a long time, climate models to predict global warming and emissions did not account for it. This oversight meant that predictions made by these models have differed greatly in their projected rise in temperatures 8 , 9 .

Human behaviour is complex and multidimensional, making it difficult — but crucial — to account for it in climate models. In a Review , Brian Beckage and colleagues thus look at existing social climate models and make recommendations for how these models can better embed human behaviour in their forecasting.

The psychology of climate change

The complexity of humans is also reflected in their psychology. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, research suggests that many people underestimate the effects of it, are sceptical of it or deny its existence altogether. In a Review , Matthew Hornsey and Stephan Lewandowsky look at the psychological origins of such beliefs, as well as the roles of think tanks and political affiliation.

Psychologists are not only concerned with understanding and addressing climate scepticism but are also increasingly worried about mental health consequences. Two narrative Reviews address this topic. Neil Adger et al. discuss the direct and indirect pathways by which climate change affects well-being, and Fiona Charlson et al. adopt a clinical perspective in their piece. They review the literature on the clinical implications of climate change and provide practical suggestions for mental health practitioners.

Individual- and system-level behaviour change

To limit global warming to a minimum, system-level and individual-level behaviour change is necessary. Several pieces in this Focus discuss how such change can be facilitated.

Many interventions for individual behaviour change and for motivating environmental behaviour have been proposed. In a Review , Anne van Valkengoed and colleagues introduce a classification system that links different interventions to the determinants of individual environmental behaviour. Practitioners can use the system to design targeted interventions for behaviour change.

Ideally, interventions are scalable and result in system-level change. Scalability requires an understanding of public perceptions and behaviours, as Mirjam Jenny and Cornelia Betsch explain in a Comment . They draw on the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss crucial structures, such as data observatories, for the collection of reliable large-scale data.

Such knowledge is also key for designing robust climate policies. Three Comments in Nature Climate Change look at how insights from behavioural science can inform policy making in areas such as natural-disaster insurance markets , carbon taxing and the assignment of responsibility for supply chain emissions .

Time to act

To buck the trend of rising temperatures, immediate and significant climate action is needed.

Natural disasters have become more frequent and occur at ever-closer intervals. The changing climate is driving biodiversity loss, and affecting human physical and mental health. Unfortunately, the conversations about climate change mitigation are often dominated by Global North and ‘WEIRD’ (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) perspectives, neglecting the views of countries in the Global South. In a Correspondence , Charles Ogunbode reminds us that climate justice is social justice in the Global South and that, while being a minor contributor to emissions and global warming, this region has to bear many of the consequences.

The fight against climate change is a collective endeavour and requires large-scale solutions. Collective action, however, usually starts with individuals who raise awareness and drive change. In two Q&As, Nature Human Behaviour entered into conversation with people who recognized the power of individual behaviour and took action.

Licypriya Kangujam is a 10-year-old climate activist based in India. She tells us how she hopes to raise the voices of the children of the world in the fight against climate change and connect individuals who want to take action.

Wolfgang Knorr is a former academic who co-founded Faculty for a Future to help academics to transform their careers and address pressing societal issues. In a Q&A , he describes his motivations to leave academia and offers advice on how academics can create impact.

Mitigation of climate change (as well as adaptation to its existing effects) is not possible without human behaviour change, be it on the individual, collective or policy level. The contents of this Focus shed light on the complexities that human behaviour bears, but also point towards future directions. It is the duty of us all to turn this knowledge into action.

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Impacts of Climate Change

Climate change is happening. Global average temperature has increased about 1.8°F from 1901 to 2016. 1 Changes of one or two degrees in the average temperature of the planet can cause potentially dangerous shifts in climate and weather. These real, observable changes are what we call climate change  impacts ​​​​​​ because they are the visible ways that climate change is affecting the Earth. For example, many places have experienced changes in rainfall , resulting in more floods , droughts , or intense rain , as well as more frequent and severe heat waves .

The planet's oceans and glaciers have also experienced changes— oceans are warming and becoming more acidic , ice caps are melting , and sea level is rising . As these and other changes become more pronounced in the coming decades, they will likely present challenges to our society and our environment.

Seeing the Impacts

Climate change impacts our health, environment, and economy. For example:

• Warmer temperatures increase the frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves, 2 which can pose health risks , particularly for young children and the elderly .
• Climate change can also impact human health by worsening air and water quality, increasing the spread of certain diseases , and altering the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events . 3
• Rising sea level threatens coastal communities and ecosystems. 4
• Changes in the patterns and amount of rainfall , as well as changes in the timing and amount of stream flow , can affect water supplies and water quality and the production of hydroelectricity. 5
• Changing ecosystems influence geographic ranges of many plant and animal species and the timing of their lifecycle events, such as migration and reproduction. 6
• Increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts , and floods, can increase losses to property, cause costly disruptions to society , and reduce the affordability of insurance. 7

Looking Ahead

Elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, so the earth will continue to warm in the coming decades. The warmer it gets, the greater the risk for more severe changes to the climate and the earth's system. Although it's difficult to predict the exact impacts of climate change, what's clear is that the climate we are accustomed to is no longer a reliable guide for what to expect in the future.

Adapting to Climate Change

Adaptation helps us prepare for some of the likely effects of climate change by reducing their impacts on ecosystems and people's well-being. Examples of adaptation include strengthening water conservation programs, upgrading stormwater systems, developing early warning systems for extreme heat events, and preparing for stronger storms through better emergency preparation and response strategies.

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2  Vose, R.S., D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, A.N. LeGrande & M.F. Wehne. (2017).  Temperature changes in the United States . In: Climate science special report: Fourth national climate assessment, volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 197–199. doi: 10.7930/J0N29V45

Ebi, K.L., J.M. Balbus, G. Luber, A. Bole, A. Crimmins, G. Glass, S. Saha, M.M. Shimamoto, J. Trtanj & J.L. White-Newsome. (2018). Human health . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II [Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock, and B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 544, 551–552. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH14

Sarofim, M.C., S. Saha, M.D. Hawkins, D.M. Mills, J. Hess, R. Horton, P. Kinney, J. Schwartz & A. St. Juliana. (2016). Temperature-related death and illness . In: The impacts of climate change on human health in the United States: A scientific assessment . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 43-68. doi: 10.7930/J0MG7MDX

3  Fann, N., T. Brennan, P. Dolwick, J.L. Gamble, V. Ilacqua, L. Kolb, C.G. Nolte, T.L. Spero & L. Ziska. (2016). Air quality impacts . In: The impacts of climate change on human health in the United States: A scientific assessment . U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 69–98. doi: 10.7930/J0GQ6VP6

4  Fleming, E., J. Payne, W. Sweet, M. Craghan, J. Haines, J.F. Hart, H. Stiller & A. Sutton-Grier. (2018). Coastal effects . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II [Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock & B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 322–352. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH8

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6  Lipton, D., M.A. Rubenstein, S.R. Weiskopf, S. Carter, J. Peterson, L. Crozier, M. Fogarty, S. Gaichas, K.J.W. Hyde, T.L. Morelli, J. Morisette, H. Moustahfid, R. Muñoz, R. Poudel, M.D. Staudinger, C. Stock, L. Thompson, R. Waples & J.F. Weltzin. (2018). Ecosystems, ecosystem services, and biodiversity . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II [Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock, and B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 268–321. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH7

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Vose, R.S., D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, A.N. LeGrande & M.F. Wehner. (2017). Temperature changes in the United States . In: Climate science special report: Fourth national climate assessment, volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart & T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 197–199. doi: 10.7930/J0N29V45

Gowda, P., J.L. Steiner, C. Olson, M. Boggess, T. Farrigan & M.A. Grusak. (2018). Agriculture and rural communities . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II [Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock & B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 399–403. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH10

Hayhoe, K., D.J. Wuebbles, D.R. Easterling, D.W. Fahey, S. Doherty, J. Kossin, W. Sweet, R. Vose & M. Wehner. (2018). Our changing climate . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II [Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock & B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 88–90. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH2

Wehner, M.F., J.R. Arnold, T. Knutson, K.E. Kunkel & A.N. LeGrande. (2017). Droughts, floods, and wildfires . In: Climate science special report: Fourth national climate assessment, volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart & T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 237–240 and 240–242. doi: 10.7930/J0CJ8BNN

Fleming, E., J. Payne, W. Sweet, M. Craghan, J. Haines, J.F. Hart, H. Stiller & A. Sutton-Grier. (2018). Coastal effects . In: Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II [Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock & B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, p. 339. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH8

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Home / For Educators: Grades 6-12 / Climate Explained: Introductory Essays About Climate Change Topics

Climate Explained: Introductory Essays About Climate Change Topics

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Climate Explained, a part of Yale Climate Connections, is an essay collection that addresses an array of climate change questions and topics, including why it’s cold outside if global warming is real, how we know that humans are responsible for global warming, and the relationship between climate change and national security.

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Climate Change Basics: Five Facts, Ten Words

Backgrounders for Educators

To simplify the scientific complexity of climate change, we focus on communicating five key facts about climate change that everyone should know. 

Why should we care about climate change?

Having different perspectives about global warming is natural, but the most important thing that anyone should know about climate change is why it matters.  

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Human, economic, environmental toll of climate change on the rise: WMO

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The relentless advance of climate change brought more drought, flooding and heatwaves to communities around the world last year, compounding threats to people’s lives and livelihoods, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization ( WMO ) said on Friday.

WMO latest State of the Global Climate report shows that the last eight years were the eight warmest on record , and that sea level rise and ocean warming hit new highs . Record levels of greenhouse gases caused “planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere”.

World Meteorological Organization April 21, 2023

The organization says its report, released ahead of this year’s Mother Earth Day , echoes UN Secretary-General António Guterres ’ call for “ deeper, faster emissions cuts to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degree Celsius”, as well as “ massively scaled-up investments in adaptation and resilience, particularly for the most vulnerable countries and communities who have done the least to cause the crisis”.

WMO Secretary-General, Prof. Petteri Taalas, said that amid rising greenhouse gas emissions and a changing climate, “populations worldwide continue to be gravely impacted by extreme weather and climate events ”. He stressed that last year, “continuous drought in East Africa, record breaking rainfall in Pakistan and record-breaking heatwaves in China and Europe affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage.”

WMO highlights the importance of investing in climate monitoring and early warning systems to help mitigate the humanitarian impacts of extreme weather. The report also points out that today, improved technology makes the transition to renewable energy “cheaper and more accessible than ever” .

Warmest years on record

The State of the Global Climate report complements the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) Sixth Assessment report released a month ago, which includes data up to 2020.

WMO’s new figures show that global temperatures have continued to rise, making the years 2015 to 2022 the eight warmest ever since regular tracking started in 1850. WMO notes that this was despite three consecutive years of a cooling La Niña climate pattern.

WMO says concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere – carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – reached record highs in 2021, which is the latest year for which consolidated data is available , and that there are indications of a continued increase in 2022.

Indicators ‘off the charts’

According to the report, “melting of glaciers and sea level rise - which again reached record levels in 2022 - will continue to up to thousands of years ”. WMO further highlights that “Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record and the melting of some European glaciers was, literally, off the charts”.

Sea level rise, which threatens the existence of coastal communities and sometimes entire countries, has been fuelled not only by melting glaciers and ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, but also by the expansion of the volume of oceans due to heat. WMO notes that ocean warming has been “particularly high in the past two decades”.

Deadly consequences

The report examines the many socio-economic impacts of extreme weather, which have wreaked havoc in the lives of the most vulnerable around the world . Five consecutive years of drought in East Africa, in conjunction with other factors such as armed conflict, have brought devastating food insecurity to 20 million people across the region.

Extensive flooding in Pakistan caused by severe rainfall in July and August last year killed over 1,700 people, while some 33 million were affected. WMO highlights that total damage and economic losses were assessed at $30 billion, and that by October 2022, around 8 million people had been internally displaced by the floods.

The report also notes that in addition to putting scores of people on the move, throughout the year, hazardous climate and weather-related events “worsened conditions” for many of the 95 million people already living in displacement .

Threat to ecosystems

Environmental impacts of climate change are another focus of the report, which highlights a shift in recurring events in nature, “such as when trees blossom, or birds migrate”. The flowering of cherry trees in Japan has been tracked since the ninth century, and in 2021 the date of the event was the earliest recorded in 1,200 years .

As a result of such shifts, entire ecosystems can be upended . WMO notes that spring arrival times of over a hundred European migratory bird species over five decades “show increasing levels of mismatch to other spring events”, such as the moment when trees produce leaves and insects take flight, which are important for bird survival.

The report says these mismatches “are likely to have contributed to population decline in some migrant species , particularly those wintering in sub-Saharan Africa”, and to the ongoing destruction of biodiversity.

Ending the ‘war on nature’

In his message on Earth Day, UN chief Mr. Guterres warned that “ biodiversity is collapsing as one million species teeter on the brink of extinction ”, and called on the world to end its “relentless and senseless wars on nature”, insisting that “we have the tools, the knowledge, and the solutions” to address climate change.

Last month, Mr. Guterres convened an Advisory Panel of top UN agency officials, private sector and civil society leaders, to help fast track a global initiative aiming to protect all countries through life-saving early warning systems by 2027. Stepped up coordinated action was announced, initially in 30 countries particularly vulnerable to extreme weather, including Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries.

Early Warnings for All

WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas said on Friday that some one hundred countries currently do not have adequate weather services in place, and that the UN Early Warnings for All Initiative “ aims to fill the existing capacity gap to ensure that every person on earth is covered by early warning services”.

Mr. Taalas explained that “achieving this ambitious task requires improvement of observation networks, investments in early warning, hydrological and climate service capacities.” He also stressed the effectiveness of collaboration among UN agencies in addressing humanitarian impacts of climate events, especially in reducing mortality and economic losses. 

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Human Impacts on the Environment

Humans impact the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Changes like these have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water. These negative impacts can affect human behavior and can prompt mass migrations or battles over clean water.

Help your students understand the impact humans have on the physical environment with these classroom resources.

Earth Science, Geology, Geography, Physical Geography

Growing Up in a Warming World: How climate change is affecting the availability and safety of water in the developmental environment

Climate change is affecting the experiences and exposures that shape early childhood development. These changes are having both direct and indirect effects on the development of children’s biological systems. Fortunately, science is helping us better understand these effects while also informing new solutions and maximizing the impact of existing solutions that are already being successfully implemented around the world.

Full Text of the Graphic

Climate change is affecting the experiences and exposures that shape early childhood development. These changes are having both direct and indirect effects on the development of children’s biological systems. Direct effects include things like exposure to toxic air from wildfire smoke—which is leading more children to develop asthma and making symptoms worse for those who already have the condition—and droughts resulting from increased temperatures that can lead to dehydration, heat stress, and heat stroke, which can cause organ dysfunction such as kidney failure.2,3 Indirect effects come from experiences like being displaced by flooding, which causes stress in caregivers and can have negative effects on the relationships that shape healthy development.4 Both these direct and indirect effects are the result of climate change.

Climate change’s impacts on the availability and safety of water have significant effects on children in the moment and across their lifespan. These effects may even occur intergenerationally through epigenetic mechanisms—chemical “tags” our body places on genes that are responses to experiences and exposures.5 Fortunately, science is helping us better understand these effects while also informing new solutions and maximizing the impact of existing solutions that are already being successfully implemented by communities and cities around the world.

Droughts: Climate change is increasing temperatures worldwide, resulting in more frequent and prolonged droughts.6 Droughts limit children’s access to drinking water, which can lead to dehydration. In early childhood, dehydration can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and problems with cognition, and it can damage critical organs like the kidneys and brain. In extreme cases, dehydration can lead to organ shutdown, which can be fatal.3 Droughts also negatively affect food production, leading to food shortages that can result in undernutrition and malnutrition. By protecting children from the ways that climate change is introducing risks into developmental environments, working to prevent future harms by investing in improvements to current systems and infrastructure, and addressing the root causes of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting the burning of fossil fuels, we can support the health and well-being of all children and their caregivers.

This can stunt growth, cause muscle breakdown, and disrupt brain development, with effects on physical and mental health and cognition that persist across the lifespan.

Extreme weather events: Climate change is also increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, and extreme rainstorms (“rain bombs”).6 These events cause flooding, storm surges, and landslides, which cause water to pass over roads, farmlands, and industrial areas, pushing pollutants including heavy metals and gasoline, heating oil, agriculture waste, bacteria, pesticides, and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) into the water supply.8 If children drink or bathe in this contaminated water, pathogens can get into the intestines and bloodstream where they affect developing biological systems.4 Drinking water contaminated with chemicals such as lead, PFAS, or gasoline can directly affect the developing brain and may lead to long-term problems with physical health, learning, memory, and behavior.9 Extreme weather events can affect caregivers and young children directly through physical injury or death from drowning, and they also have indirect effects. When extreme weather damages housing and infrastructure, it can cause significant stress by temporarily or permanently displacing families and leading to unpredictability and job loss. In children, this stress and trauma can change developing brain architecture and may lead to higher rates of mental health disorders, including anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD).10 Caregivers themselves can experience a range of adverse mental health effects as a result of displacement from extreme weather events and flooding, including anxiety, depression, suicide, and PTSD.11 This impacts children by affecting a caregiver’s ability to provide basic needs, like food or housing, as well as daily structure, routine, and responsive caregiving that are critical in promoting healthy development.

Unequal exposure to water-related climate risks: The negative developmental impacts of climate change’s effects on water are not evenly or randomly distributed; they flow through and are amplified by longstanding inequities in housing, urban planning, community infrastructure, and economic opportunity. This creates more exposure for children and families living in poverty and in current neighborhoods that have been shaped by discriminatory housing and zoning practices such as redlining, a policy that denied access to favorable mortgages to residents of areas deemed “hazardous for financial investment” because of higher concentrations of Black residents.13 Because of a longstanding lack of investment in previously redlined neighborhoods, often combined with residents of those neighborhoods being denied political power, those areas today are less equipped to withstand the effects of extreme weather events, and residents are more likely to be forced to leave their homes when these events occur.4 They are also less likely to have access to green space and adaptive technologies such as green roofs that help mitigate the effects of extreme wet weather or drought.14 Neighborhoods that have experienced chronic under-investment also tend to have limited access to clean, readily available water when the local water supply may be contaminated or less available, often because infrastructure, regulatory, and sanitation systems have not been adequately updated, enforced, or maintained over time.13 When these systems fail, communities are forced to navigate complex tasks like developing bottled drinking water distribution plans, including in cases like Jackson, Mississippi,when torrential rains pushed the already strained drinking water system to failure.

Protecting Children and Addressing Root Causes

Ensuring that all children have developmental environments that allow them to thrive—both now and across their lifespan—requires implementing existing solutions and developing new ones at three key levels:

1. PROTECT: Immediate actions should be taken to reduce harm from extreme weather events, such as implementing early warning systems that enable evacuations before storms occur.

2. ADAPT: Resources should be allocated toward improving current systems, services, and infrastructure to better withstand droughts and extreme wet weather events, including updating sewer systems and water storage facilities by repairing existing aging infrastructure.

3. PREVENT: To avoid further warming of developmental environments, we must work to address the root cause of our planet’s rapid warming through actions like decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels and investing in renewable energy sources.

Many communities and cities in the US and around the world are already successfully implementing solutions that are having positive effects across multiple parts of the developmental environment. For example, planting trees and other vegetation to decrease flooding can also improve air quality and positively affect children’s immune systems and mental health. Installing permeable pavement decreases storm runoff and lowers temperatures in developmental environments, which can improve children’s sleep and increase their ability to play outdoors comfortably.

By protecting children from the ways that climate change is introducing risks into developmental environments, working to prevent future harms by investing in improvements to current systems and infrastructure, and addressing the root causes of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting the burning of fossil fuels, we can support the health and well-being of all children and their caregivers.

For an in-depth exploration of how water shapes children’s development environments, read the full working paper from the Early Childhood Scientific Council on Equity and the Environment, “A Cascade of Impacts: The Many Ways Water Affects Child Development.”

Related Topics: child development , Warming , water , environment

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1. Spread the word

Encourage your friends, family and co-workers to reduce their carbon pollution. Join a global movement like  Count Us In, which aims to inspire 1 billion people to take practical steps and challenge their leaders to act more boldly on climate. Organizers of the platform say that if 1 billion people took action, they could reduce as much as 20 per cent of global carbon emissions. Or you could sign up to the UN’s  #ActNow campaign on climate change and sustainability and add your voice to this critical global debate.

2. Keep up the political pressure

Lobby local politicians and businesses to support efforts to cut emissions and reduce carbon pollution.  #ActNow Speak Up  has sections on political pressure and corporate action - and Count Us In also has  some handy tips  for how to do this. Pick an environmental issue you care about, decide on a specific request for change and then try to arrange a meeting with your local representative. It might seem intimidating but your voice deserves to be heard. If humanity is to succeed in tackling the climate emergency, politicians must be part of the solution. It’s up to all of us to keep up with the pressure. 

3. Transform your transport

Transport accounts for around a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions and across the world, many governments are implementing policies to decarbonize travel. You can get a head start: leave your car at home and walk or cycle whenever possible. If the distances are too great, choose public transport, preferably electric options. If you must drive, offer to carpool with others so that fewer cars are on the road. Get ahead of the curve and buy an electric car. Reduce the number of long-haul flights you take. 

4. Rein in your power use

If you can, switch to a zero-carbon or renewable energy provider. Install solar panels on your roof. Be more efficient: turn your heating down a degree or two, if possible. Switch off appliances and lights when you are not using them and better yet buy the most efficient products in the first place (hint: this will save you money!). Insulate your loft or roof: you’ll be warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer and save some money too. 

5. Tweak your diet

Eat more plant-based meals – your body and the planet will thank you. Today, around 60 per cent of the world’s agricultural land is used for livestock grazing and people in many countries are consuming more animal-sourced food than is healthy. Plant-rich diets can help reduce chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.

The climate emergency demands action from all of us. We need to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and everyone has a role to play.

6. Shop local and buy sustainable

To reduce your food’s carbon footprint, buy local and seasonal foods. You’ll be helping small businesses and farms in your area and reducing fossil fuel emissions associated with transport and cold chain storage. Sustainable agriculture uses up to 56 per cent less energy, creates 64 per cent fewer emissions and allows for greater levels of biodiversity than conventional farming. Go one step further and try growing your own fruit, vegetables and herbs. You can plant them in a garden, on a balcony or even on a window sill. Set up a community garden in your neighbourhood to get others involved. 

7. Don’t waste food

One-third of all food produced is either lost or wasted. According to UNEP’s  Food Waste Index Report 2021 , people globally waste 1 billion tonnes of food each year, which accounts for around 8-10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Avoid waste by only buying what you need. Take advantage of every edible part of the foods you purchase. Measure portion sizes of rice and other staples before cooking them, store food correctly (use your freezer if you have one), be creative with leftovers, share extras with your friends and neighbours and contribute to a local food-sharing scheme. Make compost out of inedible remnants and use it to fertilize your garden. Composting is one of the best options for managing organic waste while also reducing environmental impacts.

8. Dress (climate) smart

The fashion industry accounts for 8-10 per cent of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined – and ‘fast fashion’ has created a throwaway culture that sees clothes quickly end up in landfills. But we can change this. Buy fewer new clothes and wear them longer. Seek out sustainable labels and use rental services for special occasions rather than buying new items that will only be worn once. Recycle pre-loved clothes and repair when necessary.

9. Plant trees  

Every year approximately 12 million hectares of forest are destroyed and this deforestation, together with agriculture and other land use changes, is responsible for roughly 25 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. We can all play a part in reversing this trend by planting trees, either individually or as part of a collective. For example, the Plant-for-the-Planet initiative allows people to sponsor tree-planting around the world.

Check out this UNEP guide to see what else you can do as part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration , a global drive to halt the degradation of land and oceans, protect biodiversity, and rebuild ecosystems. 

10. Focus on planet-friendly investments

Individuals can also spur change through their savings and investments by choosing financial institutions that do not invest in carbon-polluting industries. #ActNow Speak Up  has a section on money and so does  Count Us In . This sends a clear signal to the market and already many financial institutions are offering more ethical investments, allowing you to use your money to support causes you believe in and avoid those you don’t. You can ask your financial institution about their responsible banking policies and find out how they rank in independent research. 

UNEP is at the front in support of the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the global temperature rise well below 2°C, and aiming - to be safe - for 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels. To do this, UNEP has developed a Six-Sector Solution . The Six Sector Solution is a roadmap to reducing emissions across sectors in line with the Paris Agreement commitments and in pursuit of climate stability. The six sectors identified are Energy; Industry; Agriculture & Food; Forests & Land Use; Transport; and Buildings & Cities.

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• 7 climate action highlights to remember before COP26
• Climate Action Note - data you need to know
• Emissions Gap Report 2021
• Food Waste Index 2021
• Act Now: the UN campaign for individual action
• Count Us In
• Food Loss and Waste Website

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The Ocean and Climate Change

Our ocean is changing. With 70 percent of the planet covered in water, the seas are important drivers of the global climate. Yet increasing greenhouse gases from human activities are altering the ocean before our eyes. NASA and its partners are on a mission to find out more.

The ocean is warming

Rising greenhouse gas concentrations not only warm the air, but the ocean, too. Research shows that around 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming is being absorbed by the ocean. Ocean heat has steadily risen since measurements began in 1955, breaking records in 2023 . All this added heat has led to more frequent and intense marine heat waves. The image visualizes sea surface temperature anomalies in August 2023. Warm colors (red, orange) show where the ocean was warmer than normal. Cool colors (blues) show where temperatures were cooler. The red swath in the Eastern Pacific was due to an El Niño event. El Niño is a climate phenomenon in the tropical Pacific that results in warmer than normal sea surface temperatures leading to weather impacts across the planet. Credit: NASA

Sea levels are rising

Global sea levels have risen more than 4 inches (101 millimeters) since measurements began in 1992, increasing coastal flooding in some places. As ocean water warms, it expands and takes up more space. The added heat in the air and ocean is also melting ice sheets and glaciers, which adds freshwater to the ocean and further raises sea levels. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission , launched in 2022, and Sentinel 6 Michael Freilich , launched in 2020, are providing unparalleled views of sea level rise on top of decades of data from other missions. The video shows a 21-day average of sea surface height anomalies highlighting ocean eddies and currents as imaged by the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. The red and orange colors indicate where the sea surface was higher than normal and the blues are where it was lower than normal. Credit: NAS

Explore Earth's Vital Signs

The ocean is getting a little greener

Recent research found that over the past 20 years, the tropical ocean turned greener. Ocean color reflects the life that is found in it. Green colors often correspond to phytoplankton, microscopic plant-like organisms that form the center of the ocean's food web. Observations of changes in phytoplankton populations due to climate change are a key part of the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission , which launched in 2024.

Ocean warming is altering hurricanes

Hurricanes need warm water to form and strengthen. Recent research points to warmer ocean temperatures as a key factor causing more storms to rapidly intensify. One way to detect rapid intensification before it happens may be through a change in lightning around the eye of the storm. Plus, higher sea levels worsen storm surge flooding when a storm travels over a coastline. NOAA’s GOES-East satellite captures the rapid intensification of Hurricane Lee on Sept. 7, 2023.  Credit: NASA/NOAA

Ocean acidification and heating are altering marine ecosystems

Carbon dioxide and heat are both absorbed by the ocean as greenhouse gas levels increase. When carbon dioxide is dissolved in the ocean, the water becomes more acidic. This makes it harder for corals and some other marine life to grow shells and protect themselves. Marine heat waves are complicating the matter by making it too warm for many corals to survive. Satellites are providing important data to scientists measuring such changes in ocean environments. When corals are stressed from changes in their environment, they turn white, or "bleach." Sometimes the coral is able to recover, but other times the bleaching event leads to its death. This image shows the decay of a healthy coral reef to a reef between 2014 and 2015 in the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa. Credit: NOAA/ XL Catlin Seaview Survey

Sea ice is thinning and shrinking

Melting sea ice does not affect sea levels, but it does impact global temperatures. Sea ice is light-colored and reflects sunlight back into space; open water is darker and absorbs more sunlight. Warming ocean waters melt sea ice from below, and warmer air helps melt it from above. As ice cover thins and shrinks, more ocean is exposed and less sunlight is reflected, further warming the water and air. Satellites help monitor changes in sea ice which is an area of research for upcoming missions in the Earth Systems Observatory . A photograph of Arctic sea ice breaking up as seen during an overhead flight during NASA’s Operation IceBridge in March 2011. Credit: NASA

Explore the Earth Systems Observatory

El Niño can add to the heat

El Niño occurs when the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become warmer than normal. This periodic ocean warming can add to the long-term global warming that has already accumulated, making a hot year even hotter. That’s because ocean temperatures are major drivers of global temperatures, as seen in 2023 . A visualization showing sea surface height anomalies in the Pacific Ocean in June 2023 based on satellite data. The red and orange colors show a higher-than-normal sea surface height. The blue areas were lower than normal. Credit: NASA

Read More About 2023's Record Heat

Ocean circulation may be changing

Ocean currents are vital transporters of heat around the planet. As the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt, the excess fresh water running into the ocean could disrupt the balance of temperature and salinity that drive deep ocean currents. NASA satellite mission s are monitoring the ocean for changes in heat transport as glaciers continue to melt and the ocean warms. Clouds trace out islands in the Caribbean Sea in this photo taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.  Credit: NASA

Read More About Ocean Circulation

Key Satellites and Missions

Aqua is collecting data about Earth's water cycle.

Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO)

GRACE-FO is tracking Earth’s water movement across the planet.

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich is measuring the height of the ocean.

Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT)

SWOT is providing the first global survey of Earth’s surface water and measuring how it is changing over time.

Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE)

PACE is measuring key variables related to cloud formation, particles and pollutants in the air, and microscopic, floating marine life.

Earth System Observatory

NASA’s Earth System Observatory is a series of satellites working in tandem to create a 3D, holistic view of Earth, from bedrock to atmosphere.

Latest News and Research

Nasa mission flies over arctic to study sea ice melt causes.

How NASA Spotted El Niño Changing the Saltiness of Coastal Waters

Vanishing corals: nasa data helps track coral reefs.

Is the Wilkins Ice Shelf Weakening?

Key ocean and climate resources.

NASA Sea Level Change

NASA’s Sea Level Change portal provides key data, stories, and tools related to NASA’s sea level research.

NASA Earthdata - Ocean

NASA’s Earthdata provides open access to ocean and other datasets produced by NASA satellites and its partners.

Estimating Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) Consortium

ECCO combines state-of-the-art ocean circulation models with global ocean datasets to estimate ocean circulation and its role in the climate.

State of the Ocean on NASA Worldview

NASA Worldview State of the Ocean visualizes real data from satellites to show sea surface temperatures and anomalies, and chlorophyll on a daily basis.

Ocean Color

Ocean Color provides key data, stories, and tools related to NASA’s Ocean Biology Processing Group’s research.

Climate Kids

The ocean covers about 70% of Earth’s surface. So, it’s not surprising that it plays a large part in Earth’s environment. As Earth warms, water in the ocean soaks up energy (heat) and distributes it more evenly across the planet. The ocean also absorbs carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere. The additional heat and carbon dioxide in the ocean can change the environment for the many plants and animals that live there.

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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• Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue
• 3. Local impact of climate change, environmental problems

Table of Contents

• 1. Climate engagement and activism
• 2. Climate, energy and environmental policy
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology
• Appendix: Detailed charts and tables

A majority of Americans say climate change is having at least some impact on their local community, and half say their area has experienced extreme weather over the past year, particularly those living in South Central states such as Texas and Alabama. On a related policy question, a large majority of Americans favor the idea of revising building standards so new construction can better withstand extreme weather events.

At the local level, experience with environmental problems – such as air and water pollution – varies across groups. Black and Hispanic adults are particularly likely to say they experience environmental problems in their local community, as are those with lower family incomes.

And when it comes to climate policy considerations, large majorities of Black and Hispanic adults – across income levels – say it’s very important to ensure that lower-income communities benefit from proposals aimed at reducing the effects of climate change.

More than half of U.S. adults say they have seen at least some local effects of climate change

Overall, 57% of U.S. adults say climate change is affecting their own community either a great deal (17%) or some (40%). Smaller shares say climate change is affecting their community not too much (27%) or not at all (15%).

Most Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say human activity plays at least some role in climate change

Most Americans (77%) say human activity contributes either a great deal (44%) or some (33%) to global climate change. Far fewer (22%) say human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels contribute not too much or not at all to climate change. 

Republicans continue to be less likely to believe that human activity plays at least some part in global climate change. Still, 59% of this group says human activity contributes at least some, while 40% say human activity has not too much of a role or no role in climate change. 

Democrats across generations are in broad agreement that human activity has at least some effect on climate change. Among Republicans, Gen Zers and Millennials are more likely than Gen X and Baby Boomer and older adults to see human activity as playing a role in global climate change. See the Appendix for details. 

The overall share of Americans who say their area is affected a great deal by climate change is down 7 percentage points, from 24% a year ago to 17% today.

Americans’ beliefs about local impact of climate change are more closely linked to their partisanship than to where they live. Perceptions of local climate impact vary modestly across census regions. The regions that are relatively likely to say climate change is impacting their communities, such as New England and the Pacific, tend to be places that lean Democratic in their political affiliation. There are also modest differences by generation in beliefs about its local impact.

A separate question in the survey finds that half of Americans say their local area experienced an extreme weather event in the past 12 months.

A large majority (84%) in the West South Central region say they have experienced extreme weather in the last 12 months. The region was impacted by a severe winter storm in February that led to a power crisis in Texas. In contrast to the overall partisan differences seen on this question, comparable majorities of Republicans and Democrats in the West South Central region report their communities have experienced extreme weather in the past year.

Wide public support for revised building standards to protect against extreme weather

Climate change is thought to be a key factor in the occurrence of more frequent and intense or extreme weather events. When asked about a federal government proposal to change building standards so that new construction will better withstand extreme weather events, 75% of U.S. adults responded in favor of this proposal, while 23% said it is a bad idea because it could increase costs and cause delays in important projects.

There is near consensus among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (90%) that revising building standards so construction better withstands extreme weather is a good idea. A 57% majority of Republicans and GOP leaners agree, although support is considerably higher among moderate and liberal Republicans (71%) than conservative Republicans (50%).

People who report direct experience with extreme weather in the past year are particularly likely to consider this a good idea (81% vs. 69% of those who do not report recent experience with extreme weather).

Black, Hispanic and lower-income adults more likely to report living in areas with big problems when it comes to air pollution, other environmental concerns

Overall, about six-in-ten Americans say they see at least moderate problems where they live when it comes to an excess of garbage (62%) and water pollution in lakes, rivers and streams (60%). About half (52%) say the same about local air pollution, and about four-in-ten say safe drinking water (41%) or a lack of greenspace (39%) are at least moderate problems.

Past research has found that Black, Hispanic and Asian American communities are more likely to be exposed to air pollution and other environmental hazards in their local area.

The Center survey finds Black and Hispanic adults particularly likely to say their local communities are having problems across this set of five environmental issues, and they stand out for the large share who consider these to be “big problems” where they live. About four-in-ten Black (41%) and Hispanic (37%) adults say the amount of garbage, waste and landfills in their community is a big problem. Black and Hispanic adults are also more likely than White adults to report that their community has big problems with air and water pollution, drinking water safety and a lack of greenspace and parks. A majority of Black (57%) and about half of Hispanic adults (53%) consider at least one of these five issues a big problem in their local area.

Lower-income Americans are also more likely to report that their area has big problems with these environmental issues. For example, about three-in-ten lower-income adults say their local community has a big problem with air pollution. About half as many upper-income adults (16%) say the same about their community. Half of those with lower family incomes say their local communities are having a big problem with at least one of these five environmental issues.

The Biden administration has brought a new focus to environmental justice concerns underlying climate and energy policy. Biden has called for $1.4 billion in his recent budget proposal for initiatives aimed at helping communities address racial, ethnic and income inequalities in pollution and other environmental hazards.

As Americans think about proposals to address climate change, Black (68%) and Hispanic adults (55%) stand out for the high shares who say it is very important to them that such proposals help lower-income communities.

More than half of lower-income Americans (54%) say this is very important to them, compared with 36% of upper-income adults.

Middle- and upper-income Black adults (70%) are about as likely as lower-income Black adults (66%) to say this is very important to them, however. Similarly, there are no differences on this question between middle/upper income Hispanic adults and those with lower incomes (54% vs. 57%, respectively).

A majority of Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party (59%) say it is very important to them that climate change proposals help lower-income communities; far fewer Republicans and Republican leaners (27%) say this.

Older Americans are more likely to say they regularly try to live in ways that help the environment

A large majority of Americans (86%) say they try to live in ways that help protect the environment all the time (22%) or some of the time (64%). Just 14% say they never or rarely make such an effort. These findings are largely unchanged since the question was last asked in October 2019 .

In contrast to views and behaviors related to climate change, Baby Boomer and older adults are more likely than those in younger generations to say they try to live in environmentally conscious ways all the time (29%, vs. 21% in Gen X, 16% of Millennials and 15% in Gen Z).

And, unlike views on many policy issues related to the environment, similar shares of Democrats (88%) and Republicans (84%) say they make an effort to do this at least some of the time.

Majorities of U.S. adults say they take some everyday actions in order to help protect the environment, including reducing their food waste (81%), using fewer plastics that cannot be reused such as plastic bags, straws or cups (72%) or reducing the amount of water they use (67%). More than half of Americans (54%) say they drive less or carpool to help the environment, and 40% say they eat less meat.

About one-in-five adults (18%) say they do all five of these activities to help the environment, a similar share to when these questions were last asked in October 2019. On average, Americans do 3.3 of these activities.

People who say they try to be environmentally conscious all the time are much more likely to say they are doing specific things to protect the environment. For instance, a large majority (89%) of people who make an effort to live in ways that help protect the environment all the time say they use fewer single-use plastics such as bags and straws in order to protect the environment. This compares with 35% of those who say they do not or don’t often make an effort to protect the environment.

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Climate Change: Evidence and Causes: Update 2020 (2020)

Chapter: conclusion, c onclusion.

This document explains that there are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. It discusses the evidence that the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Further climate change is inevitable; if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. There remains a range of estimates of the magnitude and regional expression of future change, but increases in the extremes of climate that can adversely affect natural ecosystems and human activities and infrastructure are expected.

Citizens and governments can choose among several options (or a mixture of those options) in response to this information: they can change their pattern of energy production and usage in order to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and hence the magnitude of climate changes; they can wait for changes to occur and accept the losses, damage, and suffering that arise; they can adapt to actual and expected changes as much as possible; or they can seek as yet unproven “geoengineering” solutions to counteract some of the climate changes that would otherwise occur. Each of these options has risks, attractions and costs, and what is actually done may be a mixture of these different options. Different nations and communities will vary in their vulnerability and their capacity to adapt. There is an important debate to be had about choices among these options, to decide what is best for each group or nation, and most importantly for the global population as a whole. The options have to be discussed at a global scale because in many cases those communities that are most vulnerable control few of the emissions, either past or future. Our description of the science of climate change, with both its facts and its uncertainties, is offered as a basis to inform that policy debate.

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following individuals served as the primary writing team for the 2014 and 2020 editions of this document:

• Eric Wolff FRS, (UK lead), University of Cambridge
• Inez Fung (NAS, US lead), University of California, Berkeley
• Brian Hoskins FRS, Grantham Institute for Climate Change
• John F.B. Mitchell FRS, UK Met Office
• Tim Palmer FRS, University of Oxford
• Benjamin Santer (NAS), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• John Shepherd FRS, University of Southampton
• Keith Shine FRS, University of Reading.
• Susan Solomon (NAS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Walsh, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
• Don Wuebbles, University of Illinois

Staff support for the 2020 revision was provided by Richard Walker, Amanda Purcell, Nancy Huddleston, and Michael Hudson. We offer special thanks to Rebecca Lindsey and NOAA Climate.gov for providing data and figure updates.

The following individuals served as reviewers of the 2014 document in accordance with procedures approved by the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences:

• Richard Alley (NAS), Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University
• Alec Broers FRS, Former President of the Royal Academy of Engineering
• Harry Elderfield FRS, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
• Joanna Haigh FRS, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Imperial College London
• Isaac Held (NAS), NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
• John Kutzbach (NAS), Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin
• Jerry Meehl, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Pendry FRS, Imperial College London
• John Pyle FRS, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge
• Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey
• Gabrielle Walker, Journalist
• Andrew Watson FRS, University of East Anglia

The Support for the 2014 Edition was provided by NAS Endowment Funds. We offer sincere thanks to the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Endowment for NAS Missions for supporting the production of this 2020 Edition.

F OR FURTHER READING

For more detailed discussion of the topics addressed in this document (including references to the underlying original research), see:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2019: Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [ https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc ]
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2019: Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259 ]
• Royal Society, 2018: Greenhouse gas removal [ https://raeng.org.uk/greenhousegasremoval ]
• U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), 2018: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States [ https://nca2018.globalchange.gov ]
• IPCC, 2018: Global Warming of 1.5°C [ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 ]
• USGCRP, 2017: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume I: Climate Science Special Reports [ https://science2017.globalchange.gov ]
• NASEM, 2016: Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852 ]
• IPCC, 2013: Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group 1. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis [ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1 ]
• NRC, 2013: Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18373 ]
• NRC, 2011: Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12877 ]
• Royal Society 2010: Climate Change: A Summary of the Science [ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/climate-change-summary-science ]
• NRC, 2010: America’s Climate Choices: Advancing the Science of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12782 ]

Much of the original data underlying the scientific findings discussed here are available at:

• https://data.ucar.edu/
• https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu
• https://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu
• https://ess-dive.lbl.gov/
• https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
• https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
• http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu
• http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot/

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth's climate. The Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, with their similar missions to promote the use of science to benefit society and to inform critical policy debates, produced the original Climate Change: Evidence and Causes in 2014. It was written and reviewed by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists. This new edition, prepared by the same author team, has been updated with the most recent climate data and scientific analyses, all of which reinforce our understanding of human-caused climate change.

Scientific information is a vital component for society to make informed decisions about how to reduce the magnitude of climate change and how to adapt to its impacts. This booklet serves as a key reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and others seeking authoritative answers about the current state of climate-change science.

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Attribution analysis of climate change and human activities on runoff and vegetation changes in the min river basin, 1. introduction, 2. materials and methods, 2.1. study area, 2.3. research methods, 2.3.1. mann–kendall trend analysis with mutation test, 2.3.2. analysis of pettitt mutations, 2.3.3. linear regression analysis, 2.3.4. stability analysis, 2.3.5. extended budyko equation, 2.3.6. elasticity coefficient method, 3.1. trend analysis of factors, 3.2. analysis of sudden changes in runoff and influencing factors, 3.3. trends in vegetation coverage changes, 3.4. mrb land use change, 3.5. ndvi with the budyko parameter n, 3.6. runoff sensitivity assessment and quantitative analysis, 3.7. runoff change attribution analysis, 4. conclusions and discussion, 4.1. discussion, 4.1.1. impacts of climate change and human activity on runoff and vegetation coverage, 4.1.2. correlation of ndvi changes with runoff, 4.1.3. shortcomings and future work, 4.2. conclusions, author contributions, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Liu, S.; Gu, Y.; Wang, H.; Lin, J.; Zhuo, P.; Ao, T. Attribution Analysis of Climate Change and Human Activities on Runoff and Vegetation Changes in the Min River Basin. Water 2024 , 16 , 1804. https://doi.org/10.3390/w16131804

Liu S, Gu Y, Wang H, Lin J, Zhuo P, Ao T. Attribution Analysis of Climate Change and Human Activities on Runoff and Vegetation Changes in the Min River Basin. Water . 2024; 16(13):1804. https://doi.org/10.3390/w16131804

Liu, Shuyuan, Yicheng Gu, Huan Wang, Jin Lin, Peng Zhuo, and Tianqi Ao. 2024. "Attribution Analysis of Climate Change and Human Activities on Runoff and Vegetation Changes in the Min River Basin" Water 16, no. 13: 1804. https://doi.org/10.3390/w16131804

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Study projects loss of brown macroalgae and seagrasses with global environmental change

by University of Helsinki

Researchers predict that climate change will drive a substantial redistribution of brown seaweeds and seagrasses at the global scale. The projected changes are alarming due to the fundamental role of seaweeds and seagrasses in coastal ecosystems, and provide evidence of the pervasive impacts of climate change on marine life.

In a collaborative study between the University of Helsinki and the EU Joint Research Centre, researchers for the first time have modeled the future distribution of brown seaweeds and seagrasses at the global scale. They predict that by 2100, climate change will drive a substantial redistribution of both groups globally: Their local diversity will decline by 3–4% on average and their current distribution will shrink by 5–6%. More notably, the preferred habitat for both brown seaweeds and seagrasses will undergo a substantial global reduction (78–96%) and will shift among marine regions, with potential expansions into Arctic and Antarctic regions.

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications .

"We find it alarming that coastal areas worldwide will become dramatically less hospitable for habitat-forming macrophytes, as this might have severe and widespread impacts on coastal ecosystem functioning at the global scale. Interestingly, while global percentual declines in diversity show similar trends for seagrasses and brown macroalgae, the regional patterns are strikingly different between the two groups," says Federica Manca, the lead author of the study from the University of Helsinki.

Why should we care about seaweeds and seagrasses?

Brown seaweeds and seagrasses provide important ecological and socio-economic services in coastal areas worldwide: They support coastal biodiversity and fisheries, ensure coastal protection, participate in ocean nutrient recycling, contribute to carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation .

As climate change is severely threatening macrophyte habitats and the services they provide, we urgently need to understand how both brown seaweeds and seagrasses will respond to changing climatic conditions in the coming decades.

Previous studies have modeled the future distribution of these habitat-forming macrophytes, focusing on regional or local scales only and on a limited number of species . In contrast, this study is the first to provide a comprehensive view of the effects of climate change on more than 200 species of brown seaweeds and seagrasses at the global scale.

The results show that the redistribution of these habitat-forming marine macrophytes will be geographically heterogeneous, and highlight the regions where the loss of macrophyte diversity and habitat will be most severe, such as the Pacific coast of South America for brown seaweeds, and the coast of Australia for seagrasses. Additionally, researchers have identified macrophyte species that will be more severely affected by climate change, like the Atlantic seaweed Laminaria digitata. The findings can help identify target areas and species for conservation, potentially buffering the impact of climate change.

Surprisingly, and contrary to expectations, the models did not predict severe losses of brown seaweed or seagrass diversity in the tropics but rather at intermediate and high latitudes, such as along the Atlantic coasts of Europe and in the Baltic Sea. This indicates that end-of-century climatic conditions in these regions might exceed the tolerance limits of resident macrophyte species. The Baltic Sea is at the forefront in the rate at which climate change is influencing the ecosystem.

"Combined with a legacy of multiple other disturbances (such as eutrophication) and low species diversity with only a few brown seaweeds and seagrasses, the Baltic Sea is exceptionally vulnerable to these predicted changes," says Alf Norkko, professor at the Tvärminne Zoological Station, University of Helsinki.

"Another surprising—and alarming—result is the dramatic loss of highly suitable habitat for both macroalgae and seagrasses globally: Coastal areas worldwide will become substantially less hospitable for habitat-forming macrophytes," adds Dr. Mar Cabeza from the Global Change and Conservation Group at the University of Helsinki.

The disappearance of these habitat-forming macrophytes can trigger cascading effects on other species, compromising the integrity of entire ecosystems and undermining ecological and socio-economic services important to human society. Thus, forecasting changes in the distribution of habitat-forming species is crucial to raise awareness of climate change impacts and foster conservation efforts accordingly.

"Our findings confirm, once again, that climate change might have profound impacts on ecosystems, promoting rapid and most often detrimental changes to the diversity and resilience of natural communities. In fact, habitat-forming macrophytes support biodiversity through an exceptional diversity of ecological interactions.

"Hence, their projected loss and redistribution might lead to unpredictable cascading effects, most likely resulting in the local extinction of many associated species," says Giovanni Strona from the EU Joint Research Centre.

Journal information: Nature Communications

Provided by University of Helsinki

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New ‘Detective Work’ on Butterfly Declines Reveals a Prime Suspect

Agricultural insecticides were a key factor, according to a study focused on the Midwest, though researchers emphasized the importance of climate change and habitat loss.

• Share full article

By Catrin Einhorn

What’s driving ominous declines in insects?

While a growing body of research shows decreases in many insect populations, it has been hard for scientists to disentangle the possible causes. Are insects suffering from habitat loss as natural areas are plowed and paved? Is climate change doing them in? What about pesticides?

The latest insight comes from a study on butterflies in the Midwest, published on Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE . Its results don’t discount the serious effects of climate change and habitat loss on butterflies and other insects, but they indicate that agricultural insecticides exerted the biggest impact on the size and diversity of butterfly populations in the Midwest during the study period, 1998 to 2014.

Especially detrimental, the researchers found, was a class of widely used insecticides called neonicotinoids that are absorbed into the tissues of plants.

“It’s a story about unintended consequences,” said Scott Swinton, a professor of agricultural economics at Michigan State University and one of the study’s authors. “In developing technologies that were very effective at controlling soybean aphid and certain other agricultural pests, non-target species that we care about, butterflies in particular, have been harmed.”

Europe largely banned neonicotinoids in 2018, citing risks to bees. The new findings come as wildlife officials in the United States weigh whether to place monarch butterflies, which range coast to coast, on the endangered species list. (They have already found such protections to be warranted but said they were precluded by higher-priority needs.)

In addition to delighting humans and pollinating plants, butterfly species are a critical food source for other animals, notably birds, during their life stage as caterpillars. In fact, research has linked some bird declines to insect declines.

Are Butterflies Wildlife? Depends Where You Live.

A legal quirk leaves officials in at least a dozen states with little or no authority to protect insects. That’s a growing problem for humans.

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