Effects Of Climate Change

Climate change has been having a real and measurable effect globally, including:

• A measured rise in global temperature
• Changing weather patterns—increased frequency and intensity of heat waves and drought, flash floods and seasonal flooding
• Melting glaciers, reduced snow cover
• Increasing desertification
• Rising sea levels, coastal flooding, increased erosion
• Biodiversity loss, species extinction
• Negative impact on crop productivity
• Increasing incidence of insect-borne disease and transmission to new areas

Many of these effects threaten freshwater supplies and contribute to food scarcity. Though no region is spared the effects of climate change, some of the hardest hit areas are in the developing world, which also have the fewest resources for coping with the effects.