Are Some People Already Being Impacted by Climate Change?

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Check out this answer from Consensus:

The evidence is clear: climate change is already impacting people around the world, particularly those in vulnerable populations and regions. Health risks, socio-economic vulnerabilities, and geographical disparities all play a role in how individuals and communities experience these impacts. As the climate continues to change, it is crucial to address these challenges through targeted communication, comprehensive research, and adaptive strategies to mitigate the adverse effects on human health and well-being.

Climate change is no longer a distant threat; it is a present reality affecting various aspects of human life and natural systems. This article explores the evidence indicating that some populations are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, with a focus on health, socio-economic vulnerabilities, and geographical disparities.

Health Impacts

Climate change is already taking a toll on human health, and this toll is expected to increase in the coming decades. Vulnerable populations, including those with pre-existing medical conditions, low income, and racial/ethnic minorities, perceive their health as being at risk due to climate change. A study conducted in Maryland revealed that individuals in households with medical conditions or disabilities, low income, and those residing in floodplains or urban heat islands feel they are at higher risk of climate-related health issues1. This highlights the need for targeted climate health communication that emphasizes protective actions for these vulnerable groups.

Global Evidence of Climate Impacts

An extensive body of evidence suggests that climate change is already impacting human and natural systems worldwide. A machine-learning-based study identified over 100,000 publications documenting observed climate impacts across all continents. This study inferred that attributable climate change impacts might be occurring in regions encompassing 85% of the world’s population and 80% of the land area2. However, there is a significant ‘attribution gap,’ with robust evidence for climate impacts being more prevalent in high-income countries compared to low-income countries. This disparity underscores the need for more comprehensive research and data collection in underrepresented regions.

Historical and Ongoing Health Impacts

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has documented that climate change impacts on human health have occurred in the past, are currently occurring, and will continue to occur in the future. Increased heat-related mortality and decreased cold-related mortality have been observed in some regions due to warming. Additionally, changes in local temperature and rainfall patterns have altered the distribution of water-borne illnesses and disease vectors. Climate-related extremes have also led to ecosystem alterations, disruptions in food production and water supply, infrastructure damage, and adverse effects on mental health and human well-being3.

 

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Walter Robinson has answered Near Certain

An expert from North Carolina State University in Climate science

People are experiencing impacts now from:

• increased extreme heat
• increased severity of storms, especially flooding rains
• indirect health impacts, for example, from longer active seasons for pests that transmit disease

There is a huge, peer-reviewed literature on this. On the severe weather side, a review focusing on the United States, is here.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Jennifer Fitchett has answered Near Certain

An expert from The University of the Witwatersrand in Biometeorology

Many people still think of climate change as a phenomenon that we will only face in the distant future. Perhaps that’s partly because climate change projections about rising temperatures and extreme weather events are tied to future dates: 2030, 2050, or 2100, for instance.

But it’s important to realise that we already are experiencing climate change, and have done so for some time now. Over the past century, global temperatures have increased by approximately 1°C. Sea level rise is already starting to affect certain low-lying coastal communities. The world is experiencing more frequent and intense extreme climate events.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report: Physical Science basis, released in September 2021, contains a comprehensive – and largely grim – assessment of the state of both recorded and projected climate change globally. The IPCC is the United Nations body for assessing science relating to climate change – a group of expert scientists from around the world, who author scientific reports on the state of the earth’s climate and future climate change projections.

Its latest report compiles research from 1400 papers, and will serve as an important reference document for the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, from October 31 to November 12. It’s there that science is turned into policy.

Such policy is critical for the whole world – and urgent for southern Africa, which is particularly vulnerable to climatic changes. The region has already been experiencing climate changes that are more rapid, and with impacts that are more severe than the global average. It also struggles with a low adaptive capacity: there’s little capital available for investment in measures to protect against future climate hazards, and very pressing immediate human rights needs for a large proportion of the population.

There’s no avoiding the reality that southern Africa is in the throes of a climate emergency. By identifying trends in the frequency of weather events happening and its intensity over a period of decades, and exploring changes in related biological systems in light of this, it’s plain to see that the region has already been rocked by climate change and related effects.

An increase in extreme temperature

Extreme temperature events can be defined by the maximum temperature, the deviation from the norm, or the length of time of above-threshold temperatures. A number of indices have been developed by the World Meteorological Organisation to identify and quantify these extreme temperature events.

Warm events, when they meet specific criteria, are termed heatwaves. These are particularly dangerous for people, animals and plants, and are a direct cause of deaths.

In southern Africa, there has been an increase in the severity and frequency of heatwave events over recent decades. Interestingly, for a few locations, there has also been an increase in the frequency of extreme cold events. While this is not a feature of climate warming, it is induced by changes in regional climate patterns, such as the number of cold fronts which move over South Africa.

Severe drought

Drought is defined as a significant and prolonged departure from mean rainfall totals. The most severe, and best known, drought in southern Africa in recent years was the “Day Zero” crisis in Cape Town. While increasing pressure for water in the City of Cape Town played a role in this, a longer-term poleward displacement in the winter-rain-bearing westerlies which bring the cold fronts and rain to Cape Town during the winter months was a significant contributor to this drought.

Southern Africa more broadly is also sensitive to El Niño induced droughts. El Niño refers to warmer than usual conditions in the Eastern Pacific that persist for a couple of months through to years, driven by a weakening of the Trade Winds, and a resultant reduction in the upwelling of colder water to the sea surface just off South America. This was the cause of the 2015-2016 drought in South Africa’s Kruger Park, which resulted in the drying up of watering holes, and the widely publicised death of hippos and later culling of other large mammals.

High intensity tropical cyclones

The southern African subcontinent is relatively well protected from tropical cyclones by the island of Madagascar. However, some tropical cyclones do form in the Mozambique Channel, and occasionally some tropical cyclones move across Madagascar. These storms can – and do, as was seen most recently with Tropical Cyclones Idai, Kenneth and Eloise – make landfall on Mozambique.

Over recent decades, tropical cyclones in the Southwest Indian Ocean have increased in intensity; the first category 5 tropical cyclone for the sub-ocean basin was recorded in 1994.

Tropical Cyclone Idai, which bordered in intensity between categories 3 and 4 on landfall, provides stark evidence of the damage wrought by high intensity tropical cyclones in populated areas.

There is also evidence that tropical cyclones have expanded their range polewards over recent decades, affecting a larger region of southern Africa.

Changes in the timing of phenological events

In addition to the weather we experience from the changing climate itself, climate change also has an impact on biological systems. Phenology, which refers to the timing of annually recurrent biological events, is one of the most sensitive bio-indicators of climate change.

In South Africa, scientists have recorded advances in the timing of apple and pear flowering in the southwestern Cape, and of Jacaranda flowering in the Gauteng City Region. Warmer sea surface temperatures have also resulted in a delay in the sardine run along the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.

These shifts have an impact on agriculture and tourism, but more importantly demonstrate that climate change is having an effect on the natural environment. These shifts in timing cannot continue indefinitely. Plants and animals have thresholds beyond which the stresses of climate change will result in at least local extinction.

The picture seems hopeless, but with mitigation and adaptation strategies and policies driven through, among other processes, COP26, southern Africa can reduce the impacts of climate change on local livelihoods. It is important at this stage to invest in adaptation to reduce the impacts of climate change, and to make every effort to reduce our reliance on carbon to slow down climate change.

I have adapted this answer from my original article in The Conversation

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Lisa Schipper has answered Near Certain

An expert from Oxford University in Environmental social science

yes, all over the world. This is best documented in the recent IPCC report of the Working Group I (physical science basis) and the Working Group II (impacts, adaptation and vulnerability) and Working Group III (mitigation) reports that will be out in February and March, respectively. There are thousands of studies documenting these impacts.

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Gabriel Filippelli has answered Near Certain

An expert from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis in Geochemistry, Paleoclimatology

Yes—I would say that all people are currently impacted by climate change. There are those very close to some of the climate change-driven disasters, such as the extreme heat and wildfires in the western US this summer, but also far away. For example, the smoke from those wildfires drifted all the way across the US, negatively impacting air quality and health for 100 million Americans.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Max Callaghan has answered Near Certain

An expert from Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Climate science

According to a recent study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01168-6), 85% of the world’s population live in areas where either warming or changes in precipitation can be attributed to human influence on the climate. That means we are unable to explain those changes except as being caused by climate change. These changes have direct and indirect impacts on people’s lives, and there is a wealth of research that looks at how extreme impacts like floods and heatwaves have been made more likely by climate change that has already happened.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Dennis Hartmann has answered Near Certain

An expert from University of Washington in Climatology

Yes, many people all over the world.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Aysha Fleming has answered Near Certain

An expert from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Climatology, Agricultural Science, Sociology

Yes, extreme events like drought, floods and storms are already worsened by climate change. Increased heatwaves have already impacted people and can be deadly. Animal habitats are shifting and reducing which is impacting people’s livelihoods and increased temperatures and sea level rise are already impacting people’s ability to live in some places.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Roger Jones has answered Near Certain

An expert from Victoria University in Climatology, Environmental Science, Economics

Yes, we detect regime shifts in most regions of the planet, so whether people know it or not, the majority of Earth’s population is being affected by climate change. They tend only to recognise it when impacts reach critical limits, inviting a reaction and perhaps requiring a response.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Steven Sherwood has answered Near Certain

An expert from UNSW Sydney in Climatology, Atmospheric Science

Absolutely, there are adverse weather events happening somewhere in the world almost all the time that are being exacerbated by the warming that has already occurred. We have flooding in New South Wales today that made the news in the US, and that is worse than it would have been without the 1.1C of human-caused warming. Tomorrow something will happen somewhere else.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Gab Abramowitz has answered Near Certain

An expert from UNSW Sydney in Climatology, Hydrology

Yes. You don’t need to look too hard to find examples.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Michael Wehner has answered Near Certain

An expert from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Climatology

Indeed. People have died, lost their homes, and suffered financially in many ways. Event impact attribution science tries to quantify these losses and damages. For instance, in my own work, we estimate that climate change causes $13 billion extra damage from flooding alone in Hurricane Harvey (out of a total $90 billion). Or there were 70,000 excess deaths in the 2003 Central European heatwave. This event was made twice as likely from climate change, so some fraction of that large mortality is due to climate change. The list goes on and on. While impact attribution is still in its early stages, the present day human influence on severe heat waves, hurricanes and floods is very clear and well documented. Hence, some fraction of the losses associated with extreme weather are attributable to climate change.

 

Are some people already being impacted by climate change?

Andrea Birgit Chavez has answered Near Certain

An expert from University of Florida in Geography, Ecology, Conservation Science

Yes, definitely. The impact of climate change is not new. Changes in climate have been monitored for the longest time and have affected diverse populations. What has changed considerable is the RATE of change in climates. A key consideration for understanding climate change is to view the threats to rural livelihoods concerns of environmental risks among local peoples.

As communities face extreme climatic events such as severe droughts and flooding, the severity of disaster impacts depends on the level of vulnerability, which is based on the intensity of the event, the degree of exposure, and response capacity. A community’s vulnerability fluctuates over time and is driven by interrelated economic, sociocultural, and demographic factors. High levels of vulnerability are often the result of uneven development processes and lack of state policies to support communities during disasters. The impact of disasters is higher among poorer groups and those dependent on natural resources. At the same time, social, economic, political, and environmental factors also play a role in the adaptive capacity of communities to respond to climate change.