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Mountains cover approximately 25 percent of the Earth's surface and provide a home to more than one-tenth of the global human population. Changes in global climate pose a number of potential risks to mountain habitats. [13] Boreal forests, also known as taiga, are warming at a faster rate than the global average, [14] leading to drier ...
When estimating the effect of climate change on species' extinction risk, the report concluded that global warming of 2 °C (3.6 °F) over the preindustrial levels would threaten an estimated 5% of the Earth's species with extinction even in the absence of any other factors like land use change. If the warming reached 4.3 °C (7.7 °F), they ...
Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species, ocean pollution, ocean acidification and ocean warming. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms. [3]
Natural forces cause some variability, but the 20-year average shows the progressive influence of human activity. [2] Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth’s climate system.
Data from 2018 found that at 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), 2 °C (3.6 °F) and 3.2 °C (5.8 °F) of global warming, over half of climatically determined geographic range would be lost by 8%, 16%, and 44% of plant species. This corresponds to more than 20% likelihood of extinction over the next 10–100 years under the IUCN criteria. [41] [42]
Some climate change effects: wildfire caused by heat and dryness, bleached coral caused by ocean acidification and heating, environmental migration caused by desertification, and coastal flooding caused by storms and sea level rise. Effects of climate change are well documented and growing for Earth's natural environment and human societies. Changes to the climate system include an overall ...
Climate change is altering the geographic range and seasonality of some insects that can carry diseases, for example Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that is the vector for dengue transmission. Global climate change has increased the occurrence of some infectious diseases. Infectious diseases whose transmission is impacted by climate change include, for example, vector-borne diseases like dengue ...
Human impact on the environment. From top left, clockwise: satellite image of Southeast Asian haze; IAEA experts investigate the Fukushima disaster; a seabird during an oil spill; depiction of deforestation of Brazil's Atlantic forest by Portuguese settlers, c. 1820 –25; acid mine drainage in the Rio Tinto; industrial fishing in 1997, a practice that has led to overfishing.