Tag: ipcc-info-bites

As a result of climate change, more and more people in cities are exposed to flooding, extreme temperatures, and water or food shortages. The infrastructure of major cities can be damaged by landslides, flooding, or temperature events, with cascading effects throughout the city. Power outages can affect water pumping, traffic control, street lighting, and hospitals, schools, and homes.

Emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from human activity cause ocean warming, acidification, oxygen loss, and other physical and chemical changes that are affecting marine ecosystems around the world. At the same time, natural climate variability and direct human impacts, such as overfishing and pollution, also affect marine ecosystems locally, regionally and globally. These climatic and non-climatic factors mutually reinforce each other.

Healthy ecosystems, with flourishing biodiversity in natural conditions, are more resilient to disturbances, whether natural or human in origin. Environmentally sustainable development inside and outside hotspots could help reverse human impacts on biodiversity.

Restoring and preventing further loss of native forests is therefore essential for combating climate change. It reduces human vulnerability to climate change by providing shade and cooling, reduces air pollution, stores carbon, builds natural systems resilience, prevents erosion and reduces flood risk by slowing water flow and supports biodiversity.

Human-caused climate change increases wildfire by intensifying its principal driving factor – heat. The heat of climate change dries out vegetation and accelerates burning. Analyses show that cross the western U.S., higher temperatures caused by human-caused climate change doubled burned area from 1984 to 2015, compared with what would have burned without climate change.

Human health and well-being are highly dependent on the “health” of nature. Studies show that being in direct contact with natural environments has direct positive effects on well-being, health and socio-cognitive abilities.

Extreme weather events are one example of the shocks caused by climate change. As climate change progresses, these shocks increase.

On this World Water Day, we take a look at what the latest IPCC report says about water security and the effects climate change has on it.

The goals of climate change adaptation are to reduce risk and vulnerability to climate change, strengthen resilience, enhance well-being and the capacity to anticipate, and respond successfully to change. The impacts of climate change affect people and nature in many different ways requiring different adaptation actions. The goals for these adaptation actions can relate to health, water or food security, jobs and employment, poverty eradication and social equity, biodiversity and ecosystem services at international, national, and local levels.

Climate change has already caused some species to go extinct, and is likely to drive more species to extinction. Species have always gone extinct in the history of our planet but human activities causing climate change are accelerating this process. Recent research predicts that one-third of all plant and animal species could be extinct by 2070 if climate change continues as it is.