Effect of Climate Change on the Environment and Ecosystems

The increased temperatures induced by global warming are not only predicted to have devastating effects on the environment in the future, but are already severely impacting the environment.
Examples of this include[7]:

-Glaciers shrinking
-Permafrost thawing
-Later freezing and earlier break-up of ice on rivers and lakes
-Lengthening of growing seasons
-Shifts in plant and animal ranges and earlier flowering of trees


On top of this, global temperatures are only predicted to continue to rise as humans continue to produce greenhouse gases. As mentioned on the previous page that had some examples, some species or regions might benefit from the increase of temperature, while others will experience negative impacts. A quote from the IPCC (which stands for the Introgovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is one of the major scientific assessments on climate change) “the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.”[8] It seems that global warming is only predicted to worsen.

These tables taken from NASA's website on global climate change, present data from the IPCC in an organized and easy to understand way on the impacts of climate change in both recent history and in predicted future trends.[8]

Global Climate Change: Recent Impact

Phenomena	Likelihood that trend occurred in late 20th century
Cold days, cold nights and frost less frequent over land areas	Very likely
More frequent hot days and nights	Very likely
Heat waves more frequent over most land areas	Likely
Increased incidence of extreme high sea level*	Likely
Global area affected by drought has increased (since 1970s)	Likely in some regions
Increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in North Atlantic (since 1970)	Likely in some regions

* Excluding tsunamis, which are not due to climate change.

Global Climate Change: Future Trends

Phenomena	Likelihood of trend
Contraction of snow cover areas, increased thaw in permafrost regions, decrease in sea ice extent	Virtually certain
Increased frequency of hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation	Very likely to occur
Increase in tropical cyclone intensity	Likely to occur
Precipitation increases in high latitudes	Very likely to occur
Precipitation decreases in subtropical land regions	Very likely to occur
Decreased water resources in many semi-arid areas, including western U.S. and Mediterranean basin	High confidence