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As climate change worsens, dangerous weather events are becoming more frequent or severe. We will experience more frequent and intense droughts, storms, floods, cyclones, wildfires, minimum and maximum temperatures (heat waves). Warmer air can hold a higher water content, which makes rainfall patterns more extreme. Melting glaciers are causing sea levels to rise, and oceans are becoming warmer.

All these will wreak havoc on people’s livelihoods and communities and threaten crops, wildlife and freshwater and food supplies. In the future parts of the earth could become inhospitable for human and animal habitation, causing mass migration and/or extinction.

Other effects

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. According to the IPCC, the extent of climate change effects on individual regions will vary over time and with the ability of different societal and environmental systems to mitigate or adapt to change.

The IPCC predicts that increases in global mean temperature of less than 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) above 1990 levels will produce beneficial impacts in some regions (i.e., extended growing seasons) and harmful ones in others (i.e., extended droughts).