IES - Climate Change (Lesson)
Climate Change
Burning fossil fuels, making cement, cultivating rice paddies, clearing forests, and other human activities release carbon dioxide and other so-called "greenhouse gases" that trap heat in the atmosphere. Over the past 200 years, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased about 35 percent. By 2100, if current trends continue, climatologists warn that mean global temperatures will probably warm 1.5 degrees to 6 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees - 11 degrees Fahrenheit). Although it's controversial whether specific recent storms were influenced by global warming, climate changes caused by greenhouse gases are very likely to cause increasingly severe weather events including droughts in some areas and floods in others. Melting alpine glaciers and snowfields could threaten water supplies on which millions of people depend.
Climate change can have broad effects on biodiversity (the number and variety of plant and animal species in a particular location). Although species have adapted to environmental change for millions of years, a quickly changing climate could require adaption on larger and faster scales than in the past. Those species that cannot adapt are at risk of extinction. Even the loss of a single species can have cascading effects because organisms are connected through food webs and other interactions.
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