Current effects of climate change
A natural-color Landsat 7 image showing Iceland's Eyjabakkajökull glacier in 2000. The blue outlines indicate where the glacier was in 1991 and 1973. Photo: NASA.
Changes in climate affect both physical and biological systems and consequently also the human socio-economic structures.
The IPCC reports found that regional changes in temperature in particular have already affected many parts of the world. For example, increased temperatures cause shrinking glaciers, thawing permafrost, later freezing and earlier break-up of ice on rivers and lakes, lengthening of mid- to high-latitude growing seasons, poleward and altitudinal shifts of plant and animal ranges, decline of some plant and animal populations, and earlier flowering of trees, emergence of insects, and egg-laying in birds. These kinds of changes have been documented in both aquatic, terrestrial and marine environments.
The impact of all these climate change effects on human cultures can be observed in the indigenous communities. With the shrinking glaciers and seasonal melting, the Inuit people of the Arctic regions of Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland are already losing their hunting-grounds and facing reduction in some fish stocks.
The temperature increase is also expected to affect “some aspect of human health, such as heat-related mortality in Europe, changes in infectious disease vectors in some areas, and allergenic pollen in Northern Hemisphere high and mid-latitudes”, adds the IPCC report.
Continue to:
Back to:
ESF provides the scientific, administrative and technical secretariat for COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).