Effects on humans Health

Health

          As our climate changes, the risk of injury, illness, and death from the resulting heat waves, wildfires, intense storms, and floods rises.

         Heat exhaustion overcomes bicyclist and others on a hot day in Amsterdam.
See how global warming is affecting health in The Netherlands—and find other hot spots with health impacts on the Climate Hot Map.

Take action on global warming now!
Extreme heat. If high temperatures, especially when combined with high relative humidity, persist for several days (heat waves), and if nighttime temperatures do not drop, extreme heat can be a killer. Of all climate-related projections by scientists, rising temperatures are the most robust. Higher temperatures are also the most influenced by human behavior: the fewer heat-trapping emissions we release into the atmosphere, the cooler we can keep our planet. Because winter temperatures are rising faster than summer ones, cold-related deaths are likely to decline.
"Natural" disasters. Projected changes in temperature and precipitation under global warming are likely to lead to other effects that threaten human health and safety. For example, changing precipitation patterns and prolonged heat can create drought, which can cause forest and peat fires, putting residents and firefighters in danger. However, a warming atmosphere also holds more moisture, so the chance of extreme rainfall and flooding continues to rise in some regions with rain or snow. In many heavily populated areas, sea-level rise is more likely to put people in the path of storm surges and coastal flooding. Warmer ocean waters may spawn more intense tropical hurricanes and typhoons while ocean cycles continue to be a factor in the frequency of tropical cyclones.
Poor air quality. Three key ingredients—sunlight, warm air, and pollution from power plants and cars burning coal and gasoline—combine to produce ground-level ozone (smog), which humans experience as poor air quality. Higher air temperatures increase smog, if sunlight, fossil fuel pollution, and air currents remain the same.
Allergens and other nuisances. Warmer temperatures and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stimulate some plants to grow faster, mature earlier, or produce more potent allergens. Common allergens such as ragweed seem to respond particularly well to higher concentrations of CO2, as do pesky plants such as poison ivy. Allergy-related diseases rank among the most common and chronic illnesses that can lead to lower productivity.
Spreading diseases. Scientists expect a warmer world to bring changes in "disease vectors"—the mechanisms that spread some diseases. Insects previously stopped by cold winters are already moving to higher latitudes (toward the poles). Warmer oceans and other surface waters may also mean severe cholera outbreaks and harmful bacteria in certain types of seafood. Still, changes in land use and the ability of public health systems to respond make projecting the risk of vector-borne disease particularly difficult.

People do not bear the health risks of climate change equally because:

            Climate trends differ by region. People who live in floodplains, for example, are more likely to see river or coastal flooding. Similarly, people who live in regions with poor air quality today are at greater risk from poor air quality days in the future.
Some people are more vulnerable to illness or death. Young children, the elderly, and those who are already ill are less able to withstand high temperatures and poor air quality, for example. Temperature extremes and smog hit people with heart and respiratory diseases, including asthma, particularly hard.
Wealthy nations are more likely to adapt to projected climate change and recover from climate-related disasters than poor countries . Even within nations, less economically fortunate individuals are more vulnerable because they are less likely to have air conditioning and well-insulated homes, and because they have fewer resources to escape danger.
Better planning—through investments in infrastructure and public health strategies—can help communities become more resilient in a warming world. However, the costs of coping with health risks linked to severe climate change are often higher than the costs of curbing heat-trapping emissions in the first place.
climatehotmap.org/global-warming-effects/health.html

EFFECTS OF Global warming

              The effects of global warming are the environmental and social changes caused (directly or indirectly) by human emissions of greenhouse gases. There is a scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, and that human activities are the primary driver. Many impacts of climate change have already been observed, including glacier retreat, changes in the timing of seasonal events (e.g., earlier flowering of plants),and changes in agricultural productivity.
Future effects of climate change will vary depending onclimate change policies and social development.The two main policies to address climate change are reducing human greenhouse gas emissions (climate change mitigation) and adapting to the impacts of climate change.
Geoengineering is another policy option.
Near-term climate change policies could significantly affect long-term climate change impacts. Stringent mitigation policies might be able to limit global warming (in 2100) to around 2 °C or below, relative to pre-industrial levels. Without mitigation, increased energy demandand extensive use of fossil fuelsmight lead to global warming of around 4 °C. Higher magnitudes of global warming would be more difficult to adapt to,and would increase the risk of negative impacts.

  "Climate change" means a change in climate that persists over a sustained period of time.The World Meteorological Organization defines this time period as 30 years. Examples of climate change include increases in global surface temperature (global warming), changes in rainfall patterns, and changes in the frequency of extreme weather events. Changes in climate may be due to natural causes, e.g., changes in the sun's output, or due to human activities, e.g., changing the composition of the atmosphere.Any human-induced changes in climate will occur against a background of natural climatic variations and of variations in human activity such as population growth on shores or in arid areas which increase or decrease climate vulnerability.
Also, the term "anthropogenic forcing" refers to the influence exerted on a habitat or chemical environment by humans, as opposed to a natural process.
Temperature changes

             Global mean surface temperature change since 1880, relative to the 1951–1980 mean. Source: NASA GISS
The graph above shows the average of a set of temperature simulations for the 20th century (black line), followed by projected temperatures for the 21st century based on three greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (colored lines).
This article breaks down some of the impacts of climate change according to different levels of future global warming. This way of describing impacts has, for instance, been used in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Assessment Reports on climate change.The instrumental temperature record shows global warming of around 0.6 °C during the 20th century.
SRES emissions scenarios
The future level of global warming is uncertain, but a wide range of estimates (projections) have been made.The IPCC's "SRES" scenarios have been frequently used to make projections of future climate change. The SRES scenarios are "baseline" (or "reference") scenarios, which means that they do not take into account any current or future measures to limit GHG emissions (e.g., the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol and the Cancún agreements).Emissions projections of the SRES scenarios are broadly comparable in range to the baseline emissions scenarios that have been developed by the scientific community.
          In the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, changes in future global mean temperature were projected using the six SRES "marker" emissions scenarios. Emissions projections for the six SRES "marker" scenarios are representative of the full set of forty SRES scenarios.For the lowest emissions SRES marker scenario ("B1" - see the SRES article for details on this scenario), the best estimate for global mean temperature is an increase of 1.8 °C (3.2 °F) by the end of the 21st century. This projection is relative to global temperatures at the end of the 20th century. The "likely" range (greater than 66% probability, based on expert judgement) for the SRES B1 marker scenario is 1.1–2.9 °C (2.0–5.2 °F). For the highest emissions SRES marker scenario (A1FI), the best estimate for global mean temperature increase is 4.0 °C (7.2 °F), with a "likely" range of 2.4–6.4 °C (4.3–11.5 °F)
The range in temperature projections partly reflects  the choice of emissions scenario, and  the "climate sensitivity".Different scenarios make different assumptions of future social and economic development (economic growth, population level, energy policies), which in turn affects projections of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The projected magnitude of warming by 2100 is closely related to the level of cumulative emissions over the 21st century (total emissions between 2000-2100). The higher the cumulative emissions over this time period, the greater the level of warming is projected to occur.
           Reflects uncertainty in the response of the climate system to past and future GHG emissions, which is measured by theclimate sensitivity). Higher estimates of climate sensitivity lead to greater projected warming, while lower estimates of climate sensitivity lead to less projected warming.
Over the next several millennia, projections suggest that global warming could be irreversible. Even if emissions were drastically reduced, global temperatures would remain close to their highest level for at least 1,000 years (see the later section on irreversibilities).

Scientists have used various "proxy" data to assess past changes in Earth's climate (paleoclimate). Sources of proxy data include historical records (such as farmers' logs), tree rings, corals, fossil pollen, ice cores, and ocean and lake sediments.Analysis of these data suggest that recent warming is unusual in the past 400 years, possibly longer. By the end of the 21st century, temperatures may increase to a level not experienced since the mid-Pliocene, around 3 million years ago. At that time, models suggest that mean global temperatures were about 2–3 °C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.Even a 2 °C rise above the pre-industrial level would be outside the range of temperatures experienced by humancivilization. Main article: Physical impacts of climate change

               Seven of these indicators would be expected to increase in a warming world and observations show that they are, in fact, increasing. Three would be expected to decrease and they are, in fact, decreasing.

Global Warming is the increase in the world's temperature and changes in the world's climate caused by Carbon Dioxide from our cars, factories and power plants. Many scientists believe that the world is getting warmer and that this will affect our oceans, weather, and agriculture. Some even believe that countries and cities near the coast will disappear as sea-levels rise.

However, not all scientists are convinced that global warming is happening, and many politicians do not want to change their policies of economic development.

This page has links to background information on global warming, both for and against.

A very easy-to-read page from the US government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/kids/gw.html
A short animation video from Brainpop: http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/content/science/brainpop/movie?id=globalwarming
A fairly easy-to-read page from the US government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/climate.html.
Here is a fairly easy page from the British Council about global warming
http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/magazine/global_warming.html.
What could the results of global warming be? Here is a page about the possible impacts of global warming from the US government EPA.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/impacts.html.
Here is a short page from New Scientist magazine in the UK.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climatetrends.jsp.
A longer and more detailed from New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climatefaq.jsp.
The National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group in the US.
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.asp.
Manchester Metropolitan University have produced this very simple Adobe Acrobat file (*.pdf, 520kb). Download it, print/and or read pages 6-12 and try the activities, including a word-search, a crossword, and questions, with activities for teachers.
Here are two quizzes from New Scientist about our consumption. How do we contribute to use of resources worldwide? http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/environment/quiz2.jsp
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/environment/quiz1a.jsp
Click on the map, on the area marked Number 52, and see one effect global warming could have on the UAE
http://www.climatehotmap.org/africa.html.  This site has hundreds of possible effects of global warming.
Watch the BrainPop video at http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/content/science/brainpop/movie?id=globalwarming
Here is a sample essay on global warming.
Gap-fill model essay on global warming, with answer key (pdf, 163 kb) New!


Not everybody agrees that global warming is happening.

Here is a short article from the national center for policy analysis which claims that television is biased in favor or scientists who support global warming but is against those who do not believe it.
http://www.ncpa.org/pi/enviro/envpd/pdenv143.html.
A very long article against global warming:
Global Warming: A Fairy Tale for Adults: http://www.discerningtoday.org/members/Digest/2000Digest/September/global_warming.htm.

http://www.admc.hct.ac.ae/hd1/english/probsoln/globalwarm.htm

Higher death rates

             Today's scientists point to climate change as "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century." It's a threat that impacts all of us—especially children, the elderly, low-income communities, and minorities—and in a variety of direct and indirect ways. As temperatures spike, so does the incidence of illness, emergency room visits, and death.
"There are more hot days in places where people aren't used to it," Haq says. "They don't have air-conditioning or can't afford it. One or two days isn't a big deal. But four days straight where temperatures don't go down, even at night, leads to severe health consequences." In the United States, hundreds of heat-related deaths occur each year due to direct impacts and the indirect effects of heat-exacerbated, life-threatening illnesses, such as heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and cardiovascular and kidney diseases. Indeed, extreme heat kills more Americans each year, on average, than hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and lightning combined.
Dirtier air
Rising temperatures also worsen air pollution by increasing ground level ozone, which is created when pollution from cars, factories, and other sources react to sunlight and heat. Ground-level ozone is the main component of smog, and the hotter things get, the more of it we have. Dirtier air is linked to higher hospital admission rates and higher death rates for asthmatics. It worsens the health of people suffering from cardiac or pulmonary disease. And warmer temperatures also significantly increase airborne pollen, which is bad news for those who suffer from hay fever and other allergies.





Higher sea levels

                The polar regions are particularly vulnerable to a warming atmosphere. Average temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere on earth, and the world's ice sheets are melting fast. This not only has grave consequences for the region's people, wildlife, and plants; its most serious impact may be on rising sea levels. By 2100, it's estimated our oceans will be one to four feet higher, threatening coastal systems and low-lying areas, including entire island nations and the world's largest cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Miami as well as Mumbai, Sydney, and Rio de Janeiro.

More frequent and severe weather

         Higher temperatures are worsening many types of disasters, including storms, heat waves, floods, and droughts. A warmer climate creates an atmosphere that can collect, retain, and drop more water, changing weather patterns in such a way that wet areas become wetter and dry areas drier. "Extreme weather events are costing more and more," says Aliya Haq, deputy director of NRDC's Clean Power Plan initiative. "The number of billion-dollar weather disasters is expected to rise."

              According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in 2015 there were 10 weather and climate disaster events in the United States—including severe storms, floods, drought, and wildfires—that caused at least $1 billion in losses. For context, each year from 1980 to 2015 averaged $5.2 billion in disasters (adjusted for inflation). If you zero in on the years between 2011 and 2015, you see an annual average cost of $10.8 billion.

         
              The increasing number of droughts, intense storms, and floods we're seeing as our warming atmosphere holds—and then dumps—more moisture poses risks to public health and safety, too. Prolonged dry spells mean more than just scorched lawns. Drought conditions jeopardize access to clean drinking water, fuel out-of-control wildfires, and result in dust storms, extreme heat events, and flash flooding in the States. Elsewhere around the world, lack of water is a leading cause of death and serious disease. At the opposite end of the spectrum, heavier rains cause streams, rivers, and lakes to overflow, which damages life and property, contaminates drinking water, creates hazardous-material spills, and promotes mold infestation and unhealthy air. A warmer, wetter world is also a boon for food-borne and waterborne illnesses and disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks.

Dirtier air

             Rising temperatures also worsen air pollution by increasing ground level ozone, which is created when pollution from cars, factories, and other sources react to sunlight and heat. Ground-level ozone is the main component of smog, and the hotter things get, the more of it we have. Dirtier air is linked to higher hospital admission rates and higher death rates for asthmatics. It worsens the health of people suffering from cardiac or pulmonary disease. And warmer temperatures also significantly increase airborne pollen, which is bad news for those who suffer from hay fever and other allergies.


Higher wildlife extinction rates

            As humans, we face a host of challenges, but we're certainly not the only ones catching heat. As land and sea undergo rapid changes, the animals that inhabit them are doomed to disappear if they don't adapt quickly enough. Some will make it, and some won't. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2014 assessment, many land, freshwater, and ocean species are shifting their geographic ranges to cooler climes or higher altitudes, in an attempt to escape warming. They're changing seasonal behaviors and traditional migration patterns, too. And yet many still face "increased extinction risk due to climate change." Indeed, a 2015 study showed that vertebrate species—animals with backbones, like fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles—are disappearing 114 times faster than they should be, a phenomenon that has been linked to climate change, pollution, and deforestation.





      More acidic oceans

               The earth's marine ecosystems are under pressure as a result of climate change. Oceans are becoming more acidic, due in large part to their absorption of some of our excess emissions. As this acidification accelerates, it poses a serious threat to underwater life, particularly creatures with calcium carbonate shells or skeletons, including mollusks, crabs, and corals. This can have a huge impact on shellfisheries. Indeed, as of 2015, acidification is believed to have cost the Pacific Northwest oyster industry nearly $110 million. Coastal communities in 15 states that depend on the $1 billion nationwide annual harvest of oysters, clams, and other shelled mollusks face similar long-term economic risks.

Effects of Global Warming

Even a seemingly slight average temperature rise is enough to cause a dramatic transformation of our planet. According to the National Climate Assessment, human influences are the number one cause of global warming, especially the carbon pollution we cause by burning fossil fuels and the pollution-capturing we prevent by destroying forests. The carbon dioxide, methane, soot, and other pollutants we release into the atmosphere act like a blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm. This warming is altering the earth's climate system, including its land, atmosphere, oceans, and ice, in far-reaching ways. Small rise will have grave consequences, ones that are already becoming apparent, for every ecosystem and living thing—including us.
The biggest health threat of the 21st century is the climate change. It's a threat that impacts all of us—especially children, the elderly, low-income communities, and minorities—and in a variety of direct and indirect ways. As temperatures spike, so does the incidence of illness, emergency room visits, and death. Here are more hot days in places where people aren't used to it. Say's, "They don't have air-conditioning or can't afford it. One or two days isn't a big deal. But four days straight where temperatures don't go down, even at night, leads to severe health consequences. In the United States, hundreds of heat-related deaths occur each year due to direct impacts and the indirect effects of heat-exacerbated, life-threatening illnesses, such as heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and cardiovascular and kidney diseases.
Rising temperatures also worsen air pollution by increasing ground level ozone, which is created when pollution from cars, factories, and other sources react to sunlight and heat. Dirtier air is linked to higher hospital admission rates and higher death rates for asthmatics. It worsens the health of people suffering from cardiac or pulmonary disease. And warmer temperatures also significantly increase airborne pollen, which is bad news for those who suffer from hay fever and other allergies.
As humans, we face a host of challenges, but we're certainly not the only ones catching heat. As land and sea undergo rapid changes, the animals that inhabit them are doomed to disappear if they don't adapt quickly enough. Some will make it, and some won't. Many land, freshwater, and ocean species are shifting their geographic ranges to cooler climes or higher altitudes, in an attempt to escape warming. They're changing seasonal behaviors and traditional migration patterns, too. And yet many still face "increased extinction risk due to climate change. A 2015 showed that vertebrate species—animals with backbones, like fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles—are disappearing 114 times faster than they should be, a phenomenon that has been linked to climate change, pollution, and deforestation.

www.nrdc.org/stories/are-effects-global-warming-really-bad

Causes of global warming?

       Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) and other air pollutants collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earth’s surface. Normally, this radiation would escape into space—but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter. In the United States, the burning of fossil fuels to make electricity is the largest source of heat-trapping pollution, producing about two billion tons of CO2 every year. Coal-burning power plants are by far the biggest polluters. The country’s second-largest source of carbon pollution is the transportation sector, which generates about 1.7 billion tons of CO2 emissions a year.

Curbing dangerous climate change requires very deep cuts in emissions, as well as the use of alternatives to fossil fuels worldwide. The good news is that we’ve started a turnaround: CO2 emissions in the United States actually decreased from 2005 to 2014, thanks in part to new, energy-efficient technology and the use of cleaner fuels. And scientists continue to develop new ways to modernize power plants, generate cleaner electricity, and burn less gasoline while we drive. The challenge is to be sure these solutions are put to use and widely adopted.

 Is the earth really getting hotter?

            Yes. Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history. And experts see the trend is accelerating: All but one of the 16 hottest years in NASA’s 134-year record have occurred since 2000. Climate change deniers have argued that there has been a “pause” or a “slowdown” in rising global temperatures, but several recent studies, including a 2015 paper published in the journal Science, have disproved this claim. And scientists say that unless we curb global-warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could increase by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.

Is global warming causing extreme weather?

         Scientists agree that the earth’s rising temperatures are fueling longer and hotter heat waves, more frequent droughts, heavier rainfall, and more powerful hurricanes. In 2015, for example, scientists said that an ongoing drought in California—the state’s worst water shortage in 1,200 years—had been intensified by 15 percent to 20 percent by global warming. They also said the odds of similar droughts happening in the future had roughly doubled over the past century. And in 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine announced that it’s now possible to confidently attribute certain weather events, like some heat waves, directly to climate change.

The earth’s ocean temperatures are getting warmer, too—which means that tropical storms can pick up more energy. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early 1980's, as well as the number of storms that reach categories 4 and 5. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina—the costliest hurricane in U.S. history—struck New Orleans; the second-costliest, Hurricane Sandy, hit the East Coast in 2012.

The impacts of global warming are being felt across the globe. Extreme heat waves have caused tens of thousands of deaths around the world in recent years. And in an alarming sign of events to come, Antarctica has been losing about 134 billion metric tons of ice per year since 2002. This rate could speed up if we keep burning fossil fuels at our current pace, some experts say, causing sea levels to rise several meters over the next 50 to 150 years.