What are the three main impacts of climate change on human beings?
2 Answers
Mortality rates, increased sea level, ecosystems change
Explanation:
Climate change will have various effects on human health. Direct effects can be listed as increased heat stress, asthma, and other cardiovascular and respiratory problems. Indirect effects are likely to include climbed incidence of communicable health problems, increases mortality and injury due to increased numbers and magnitudes of natural disastaers (floods, forest fires, etc.).
A sea-level rise will have major effects on coastal areas (such as Bangladesh). A large portion of the human population settles in coastal areas. Approximately a quarter of Bangladesh population lives in areas below 3 meters above mean sea level. Estimates of sea-level rise in this region due to a combination of land subsidence and global climate change are 1 meter by the year 2050 and 2 meters by the end of this century. The effect of global climate change on Bangladesh would be devastating.
Changes in climate also affect vegetation cover indirectly, through decomposition and nutrient cycling. In terrestrial ecosystems, these processes rely on soil temperature and humidity. Decomposition proceeds faster under warmer and wetter circumstances. If the soil temperature rises 5 degrees Celcius, a 60 percent increase in rates of soil respiration is anticipated, a direct consequence of increased microbial and root respiration. Global climate change will most likely cause increased rates of decomposition and microbial respiration. These lead to a significant rise in carbon dioxide emissions from soils to the atmosphere.
- Social impacts on human life. e.g. death, injury
- Economic impacts, this examples includes loss of agriculture, impacts on tourism.
- Environmental impacts are very diverse, such as loss of biodiversity, loss of human environments (such as low-lying settlements).
Explanation:
Climate change is a natural phenomena, which has occurred over millennia, leading to climates like those of global glaciation (Ice Ages). It is natural to see a dip and increase in global temperatures in the history of Earth's climate, as many different physical effects, some we're not even aware of, impact. Whether that be something from outer space such as a meteorite impact, or the effect of a tectonic natural disaster such as a volcanic eruption - it is natural to see a decrease and increase of global temperature
However, the Human race has in recent centuries, effected this balance, mainly due to the impacts of releasing unnatural amounts of greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere via combustion of these limited resources. Which has contributed to the layer in our atmosphere which helps to insulate our planet, by thickening it via these emissions. This traps the thermal energy emitted from the sun, which cannot escape back into space after being reflected by the earth.
This warming has upset the global balance, and has sped up climate change, rather than creating climate change which many people have misidentified in the past (a certain President maybe?) so its good to be able to denote the difference.
Impacts of climate change vary all over the world, for example, many countries ringing the Pacific Ocean, have suffered from the effects of El Niño and La Niña. which in recent years have been influenced more strongly by rapidly quickening climate change.
El Niño is characterized mainly by unusually warmer equatorial water in the Pacific, which leads to increased rainfall and destructive flooding from the southern tier of the US to Peru, and leading to dry, drought like weather in the west Pacific, causing the devastating bush fires in Australia.
La Niña is characterized mainly by unusually cold equatorial water in the Pacific, which leads to increased rainfall in the west Pacific like in Southeast Asian countries, which can cause dangerous flooding. It also causes droughts and drier than normal weather in the east and central Pacific, which can lead to forest fires, like those in California.
These two events cause devastating economic, environmental and social impacts. Which are not hard to imagine from how bad the flooding and fires/droughts are.
Causing loss of life and injuries, destruction to homes and habitats, and destroying farmland and businesses.
Climate change can be seen on your TV right now. Flooding in Bangladesh and Nepal, wildfires and continuing drought in California, the recent bout of storms in the Caribbean, the winter storms flying across the Atlantic causing damage to Europe on landfall, rising sea levels causing the disappearance of the Maldives and contributing to the extinction of the only endemic mammal of the Great Barrier Reef; the Bramble Cay melomys, an example of a loss of biodiversity. It is not hard to see the effects of climate change right now, and why so many are making such an effort to slow it down.
