Effects Of Climate Change Essay Example for Free

Effects Of Climate Change Essay Climate change may result in regional changes in the weather, which will be more obvious if the weather were compared from one decade to another, and not on a daily basis. However, scientists have hypothesized that when the temperature of the surface of the earth has reached a highly critical level, such high temperature will cause severe and drastic changes to the atmosphere, affecting the oceans and will severely alter the weather patterns in a matter of years. Changes in the weather may include increasingly hot days and less cool days. The water levels will go down, exposing more land surface during the summer. Even higher latitude regions will be warmer by 40%. In addition, the amount the precipitation, be it rain or snow, will also increase, in the form of stronger storms and very intense typhoons and hurricanes. The El Nino events may also be more increase due to global warming. Global warming not only affects the weather, but it will also affect natural habitats. Higher levels of CO2 may facilitate the growth of forests, facilitating them to flourish and bloom. The warmer ocean waters will be helpful to fish and algae in the high seas. However, those organisms in higher elevations will find difficulty in surviving in warmer environments. Higher temperatures in oceans may kill corals, which are the nurseries for fishes and other aquatic organisms. For the human population, global warming may cause more incidents of infectious diseases such malaria, as well as systemic health problems such as heat stroke and respiratory diseases. Currently, the world is confused as society is ignorant of the detailed effects of global warming. Society is aware the summers are now longer and more intense and winters are envious of summer’s wrath, unleashing a fury that rivals the intensity of the heat. This is actually what global warming does. It confuses the world and now currently has also succeeded in confounding scientists. From a scientific point of view, global warming can be understood as a global environmental phenomenon which is characterized by an increase in the average temperature of the Earths near-surface air and oceans (Smith and Reynolds, 2005). There is certainly no doubt that global warming has a very detrimental effect on the environment as it causes rising sea levels and alters the amount and pattern of precipitation that a areas all over the world get (Gregory et al. , 2002). These environmental changes are also the projected causes of other ecological changes such as increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events which in turn creates changes in agricultural yields, glacier retreat, reduced summer stream flows, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors (Choi and Fisher, 2003). Based on the current scientific projections, the temperature of the world is expected to increase by 1. 1 to 6. 4 Â °C (2. 0 to 11. 5 Â °F) between the years 1990 and 2100. While most of the studies and projection models that have been utilized for these estimates cover the period up to the year 2100, global temperature warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a millennium even if no further greenhouse gases are released after this date (Haigh, 2003). This is due to the melting of the polar ice caps which is estimated to continue due to the changes that have already occurred in the world’s temperature.