EXTREME WATER

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    As the earth’s atmosphere heats up, it collects, retains, and drops extra water, changing weather styles and making wet regions wetter and dry regions drier. Higher temperatures get worse and increase the frequency of many varieties of disasters, including storms, floods, warmth waves, and droughts. These occasions will have devastating and costly consequences, jeopardizing get entry to to clean drinking water, fueling out-of-control wildfires, damaging property, growing hazardous-fabric spills, polluting the air, and main to loss of life.

 

 

 DIRTY AIR

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    Air pollution and climate change are inextricably linked, with one exacerbating the other. When the earth’s temperatures rise, not only does our air gets dirtier—with smog and soot levels going up—but there also are extra allergenic air pollution which includes circulating mold (way to damp situations from excessive weather and greater floods) and pollen (because of longer, stronger pollen seasons)

 

 

 HEALTH RISKS

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    According to the World Health Organization, “climate change is expected to cause about 250,000 additional deaths per year” between 2030 and 2050. As worldwide temperatures rise, so do the quantity of fatalities and illnesses from heat stress, heatstroke, and cardiovascular and kidney disease. As air pollution worsens, so does respiratory health—especially for the 300 million human beings living with asthma worldwide; there’s extra airborne pollen and mold to torment hay fever and allergic reaction sufferers, too. Extreme weather events, which includes extreme storms and flooding, can cause injury, drinking water contamination, and storm damage which can compromise simple infrastructure or cause community displacement. Indeed, historical models suggest the probability of being displaced through a disaster is now 60 percentage higher than it was 4 decades ago—and the largest increases in displacement are driven by weather- and climate-related events.

 

 

RISING SEAS​

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    The Arctic is heating twice as fast as any other place on the planet. As its ice sheets melt into the seas, our oceans are on track to rise one to four feet higher by 2100, threatening coastal ecosystems and low-lying areas.

By the end of the century, global mean sea level is likely to rise at least one foot (0.3 meters) above 2000 levels, even if greenhouse gas emissions follow a relatively low pathway in coming decades.

 

 

 WARMER , MORE ACIDIC OCEANS

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    The earth’s oceans absorb between one-quarter and one-third of our fossil fuel emissions and at the moment are 30 percentage more acidic than they were in preindustrial times. This acidification poses a critical danger to underwater life, especially creatures with calcified shells or skeletons like oysters, clams, and coral. It may have a devastating impact on shellfisheries, as well as the fish, birds, and mammals that depend on shellfish for sustenance. Rising ocean temperatures also are altering the range and population of underwater species and contributing to coral bleaching events able to killing whole reefs—ecosystems that support more than 25 percentage of all marine life.

 

 

 IMPERILED ECOSYSTEMS

 

    Climate change is increasing pressure on wildlife to adapt to changing habitats—and fast. Many species are searching out cooler climates and higher altitudes, changing seasonal behaviors, and adjusting traditional migration patterns. These shifts can basically transform whole ecosystems and the complicated webs of lifestyles that depend on them. As a result, according to a 2014 IPCC climate change report, many species now face “increased extinction risk because of climate change.” And one 2015 study showed that mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and other vertebrate species are disappearing 114 times quicker than they should be, a phenomenon that has been linked to climate change, pollution, and deforestation—all interconnected threats. On the flip side, milder winters and longer summers have enabled a few species to thrive, such as tree-killing insects which are endangering entire forests.

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