As Climate Change leads to the warming of the earth, it is affecting our sea levels and weather patterns, amongst other risks such as wildfires, droughts, food instability, species loss and many more. A changing climate means these risks create a knock-on effect. For instance, droughts in species-diverse and agricultural-heavy land cause problems in species chains and food chains.

It can be helpful to better understand the risks by breaking them down one by one, so keep reading to learn how and why this is happening.

The Effects

Rising Sea Temperatures

As sea temperatures rise, they increase the likelihood of large storms which have grown more frequent in recent years. Typically, the ocean traps up to 90% of heat from CO2.
However, due to the increase in sea temperature, this effectiveness is diminishing. The latest research analysing sea temperatures for the last 150 years suggests that extreme heat in oceans passed the point of no return in 2014 and is now the new normal. Sea temperatures in 2022 broke new records.

Another important effect of sea temperature rise is the increase in salinity or salt levels that occur as warmer water evaporates faster, increasing the average salt density.

Other effects are the bleaching of corals, the migration of species and the blooming of plankton, causing oxygen starvation and difficulties in the embryo development of sea creatures.

Breakdown of the polar regions

Temperatures in the Arctic and Greenland have risen rapidly in recent years. Summer temperatures in the Arctic Circle have reached an unprecedented record of 48°C compared to the typical winter temperature of -40°C.

Currently, about 750 billion tonnes of ice is melting from ice caps and glaciers each year. These changes have been studied since the 1950s, and the findings have been dramatic. Recent melting rates are six times greater than in the 1990s. This not only leads to a rise in sea level but also reduces the amount of heat-reflective surface and instead replaces it with a heat-absorbing surface, encouraging more global warming. As the ground temperature rises in these previously frozen lands, the permafrost melts leaving unstable grounds and releasing methane, a gas four times as potent as CO2 in warming the atmosphere.

Sea Levels

As the Polar Regions and Greenland melt, the sea levels continue to rise. The effects of this are already being seen on low-lying islands in the Pacific, such as Tuvalu. This is an island with a population of around 11,000 people, and its highest point is just 4.5 metres (15ft) above sea level in 2020.

Since 1993, sea levels have risen about 0.5cm (0.2in) a year, according to a 2011 Australian government report. A recent study by NASA and the NOAA in the USA expects sea levels to rise by the same amount in the next 30 years as they did in the last century. The predicted sea level rises for the UK show large areas of land loss by 2100.

Land Temperatures

Land temperatures are also rising, particularly in the continents with large land masses such as the United States. The city of Phoenix, for example, had 53 days in 2020 when the temperature topped 43°C. This resulted in almost 200 deaths, and there is now concern worldwide about the effects of overheating on populations as climate change takes place.

Fires

Fires are a natural phenomenon that is necessary for the regrowth of new stock within forests. There needs to be a balance, with rising temperatures and droughts leading to a lack of forests and a subsequent lack of trees to absorb CO2 (necessary in the same way as the Oceans for absorbing C02 in the atmosphere).

The proximity of forests to areas of human inhabitation also increases the danger to human life, with fires becoming wilder and more difficult to control with climate change. Forest fires also pose a threat to human populations, as these fires can become much wider spread into inhabited land.

Drought

We have seen increasing levels of drought in areas of the earth in recent years. Climate change can encourage these conditions in the following ways.

Warmer temperatures increase the amount of evaporation, which in turn dries out soils and vegetation. This makes periods with low rainfall drier than they would be in cooler conditions.
Climate change alters the timing of water availability.

Warmer winters mean less snow, which is important in water management systems that depend on snowmelt from mountains. Less snow means the earth is less reflective, causing more heat to be absorbed by the ground.

Warming temperatures seem to cause greater variation in rainfall, leading to more drought and flood conditions. This variation is causing certain regions to be drier, and other regions wetter.

Food Production

There are obvious effects on food production caused by droughts and floods, but also there are migrating growing conditions as the world warms up unequally.

A good example of this is how southern England is shifting towards being a wine-growing region rather than one that grows hops.

Staple crops like wheat, maize and rice become less productive in higher temperatures and will require modifications to seed types to keep food levels up. This problem is paralleled with a loss of soil quality from previous over-farming.

Flooding

As we can see from the paragraphs above, there are many potential causes of flooding. Sea level rise, degradation of the land, greater variability of rainfall patterns and amounts and the rise of urbanisation.

Apart from reducing our carbon footprints, there is not much we can do about sea levels and rainfall patterns.

However, there is much we can do in the way we look after the land to make sure that excessive rainfall is absorbed before it swells up rivers and causes bigger problems.

Migration

In recent years we have seen increases in migration, particularly from the south to the north due to war and poverty. Even refugees fleeing danger have become a subject of much contention, and there has been a definite and concerted pushback against economic migrants.

Some of the economic migration we are already seeing has been caused by climate change, as people already living on the margins of poverty and hunger find that due to the changing climate, they can no longer grow enough food to make a living or feed themselves.

Now that we have a little more clarity on the risks posed by climate change, we can look to the future and how they might impact us.

Click below to learn about the likely implications of Climate Change on our world and right here, in the Meadows.

Return to the Effects of Climate Change