H Geography - Global Issues - Global Climate Change - Impacts of Climate Change

What are the different types of impact of climate change?

The different types of impact of climate change are;

• Flooding

• Weather

• Ecological

Flooding - Impact of Climate Change

• Sea levels rise due to thermal expansion of the oceans and by the melting of glaciers and land based ice caps.

• Low lying coastal areas will suffer flooding, for example Bangladesh. This leads to the large scale displacement of people, a loss of land for farming, and the destruction of property.

• Climate change refugees must move to higher ground or to other countries from at risk areas such as Tuvalu or the Maldives. This exerts more pressure on resources such as housing, water supplies, and power supplies in the area where climate change refugees are moving to.

Weather - Impact of Climate Change

• There will be more extreme and more variable weather such as flooding and droughts, and more frequent and intense hurricanes due to increased sea temperatures.

• There will be an increase in precipitation, particularly in the winter in northern countries.

• There will be an increase in vector borne and tropical diseases as warmer areas expand. Possibly up to 40 million more people in Africa will be at risk of contracting malaria due to climate change.

• Changes to ocean current circulation may mean the thermohaline circulation starts to lose impact on north-western Europe. This would result in considerably colder winters.

• More frequent El Niños or La Niñas lead to changes in the monsoon

• A prolonged dry season can lead to forest fires. For example, the Australian bushfires.

Ecological - Impacts of Climate Change

• There is a predicted extinction of some land species due to habitat loss. An example of a land species already lost due to habitat loss resulting from climate change is the Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola). They were the first mammal species driven to extinction by anthropogenic climate change.

• An increase in sea temperature leads to coral reefs bleaching. Coral then expels the algae causing it to turn white. The loss of coral causes large scale disruption of marine ecosystems.

• Climate change is making rivers and their tributaries too warm for salmon to spawn in.

• Climate change is leading to more rain at certain times of the year. In Scotland, large amounts of rain in June are impacting capercaillie chicks by making it harder for them to find food and also by making their downy feathers wet, leading to lowered body temperatures and death.