Climate change is already having visible effects on the world.

The Earth is warming,

rainfall patterns are changing, and sea levels are rising. These changes can increase
the risk of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and fires.

What are the effects of climate change?

A changing climate impacts crop growth and human health, while many people may need to
leave their homes. It places certain species at an increased risk of extinction. The effects
of climate change are real, and they are already happening.

The level of climate change we will see depends on how quickly we cut emissions
of dangerous greenhouse gases. Even if we were to stop all emissions today, we would not
prevent some changes. However, the sooner we cut emissions, the smaller the changes will
be.

We know that greenhouse gases, aerosol emissions and land use affect our climate. Overall,
human activity is warming our planet.

Changes to the climate system

Climate change can affect our climate system in lots of different ways:

 Changes in the hydrological cycle

 Warmer land and air
 Warming oceans
 Melting sea ice and glaciers
 Rising sea levels
 Ocean acidification
 Global greening
 Changes in ocean currents
 More extreme weather

Find out more about these and other indicators of climate change on our global climate
dashboard and extremes dashboard.

Impacts of climate change

Our climate system is finely balanced, and small changes can have significant
consequences.

Some of the impacts from these changes to our climate system include:

 Risk to water supplies

 Conflict and climate migrants
 Localised flooding
 Flooding of coastal regions
 Damage to marine ecosystems
 Fisheries failing
 Loss of biodiversity
 Change in seasonality
 Heat stress
 Habitable region of pests expands
 Forest mortality and increased risk of fires
 Damage to infrastructure

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  Food insecurity

Climate change has serious, long-term, and far-reaching negative consequences for our
ocean.

Burning fossil fuels, raising livestock, and clearing forests are just three examples of human
activities that release billions of tons of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases into our
atmosphere every year, making our planet warmer. The ocean has buffered us from the
worst impacts of climate change—absorbing more than 25 percent of the excess CO2 and
more than 90 percent of the excess heat. But these climate services come at a significant
cost for marine ecosystems and result in harmful impacts including:

increasing ocean temperature: bleaches coral reefs, shifts where fish can live, and
decreases ocean wildlife,

Ocean acidification: causes a depletion of carbonate ions, which are critical for shell-forming
animals like oysters, crabs, and shrimp,

Decreasing oxygen: creates areas that suffocate marine animals, shrinks their habitats, and
forces them to swim into places where they are more vulnerable to predators,

More intense tropical storms and higher sea level: puts coastal communities in harm’s way
and destroys coastal wetland habitats which include mangroves and salt marses.

The effects of climate change include extreme heat and drought, more rainfall and more
frequent extreme weather events such as storms and floods.

Around the world, climate change already has (or will soon have) impacts on every aspect of
human life. Wildfires and extreme temperatures are already impacting people’s health.
Drought and less fresh water mean it’s harder to grow food.

Climate change is a consequence of rising average global temperatures caused by

greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Small changes in temperatures, from
only 1ºC above what they were before the industrial era, are already affecting the
environment and people worldwide.

World leaders agreed at the 2015 Paris climate summit to limit temperatures to well below
2ºC, and 1.5ºC if at all possible. This is because there really is no safe level of warming. It’s
also because at 2ºC, a number of island nations in the Pacific Ocean are under threat of
being swallowed up almost entirely by sea level rises. At Paris, the governments of these
countries lobbied hard for a target of 1.5ºC to ensure their survival.

Hasn’t the climate always changed?

Some people say the climate has always changed, and that’s true. But what human activity
is doing to the planet’s atmosphere is different to anything that’s happened before – which
were mostly smaller, natural changes taking place over millions of years.

The average global temperature on Earth has already increased by a little over 1ºC since
1880, and most of that since 1975.

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Because of this rapid climate change, wildfires are more likely to rage out of control,
reducing forests to ash. The oceans are warming and the water is becoming more acidic,
causing mass coral die-offs and the loss of breeding grounds for sea creatures.

Delicate ecosystems that are home to insects, plants and animals struggle to adapt quickly
enough to the changing climate, putting one million species at risk of extinction.

All of this means that our food security, health and quality of life are all under threat.

What are the impacts of climate change on people?

The impacts of heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, storms, floods and sea-level rise is already
devastating for many communities around the world.

Impacts are predicted to become catastrophic if governments cannot bring greenhouse gas
emissions and global temperature rises under control.

Storms, floods and sea-level rise destroy homes and lives

In the UK, climate change is causing more extreme weather such as heatwaves and storms.
Increased heat in the atmosphere leads to more heavy rainfall and more frequent flooding,
often impacting the same areas over and over again.

Flooding has turned lives upside-down in Yorkshire, Somerset and Cumbria. And a coastal
village in Wales, Fairbourne, is being evacuated because of the growing threat of sea level
rise.

In the Pacific island nations, Central America, the Caribbean and southern US states such
as Louisiana and Florida, hurricanes are increasingly severe and far more frequent, leading
to loss of life, homes, harvests or entire farms.

In South and Southeast Asia, countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Philippines face
more and stronger cyclones or typhoons – which can destroy entire regions. It take years to
rebuild.

Extreme weather events are devastating to any community. But those in poorer nations, and
people living in underprivileged communities in rich nations, also struggle to recover. In the
US, government neglect, inequality and racism have led to inadequate emergency
responses and very slow recovery. This was seen most starkly after Hurricane Katrina in
2010 and Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Sea level rises are already affecting Pacific island nations like Kiribati and the Marshall
Islands.

Native Americans in Alaska and Louisiana are facing not only a rapid reshaping of their
ancestral coastlines, but also the effects of polluting oil and gas drilling.

Indigenous Peoples worldwide suffer disproportionately from both the causes and effects of
climate change. This is despite often having a deep understanding of how to look after
nature and use natural resources sustainably.

Heat, drought and fires increase health risks

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Heatwaves, droughts and wildfires have serious effects on people and communities. As well
as the damage caused by fire itself to wildlife and human settlements, smoke inhalation and
air pollution from fire is a major health risk.

Heat and drought are also bad for human health. There is a limit to how much heat a human
body can cope with. And lack of clean water to drink or grow food can cause illness,
malnourishment, famine, migration and war.

Extreme heat, particularly in cities, can be deadly – particularly for older people. In Europe
summer heatwaves have already caused tens of thousands of deaths in some recent years.

Heatwaves also worsen droughts around the world. These extended periods without water
threaten not only human health, but also how much food can be grown. According to the UN,
this has led to alarming rises in global hunger.

Heatwaves and drought can lead to wildfires. Wildfires are already affecting many countries
around the world on a regular basis. The Amazon, Australia, the Western US and Siberia
have all seen alarming wildfires in recent years.

What are the effects of climate change on nature?

Extreme weather

A key effect of climate change is extreme weather.

Rising temperatures cause heatwaves droughts, and wildfires. They also warm the
atmosphere, increasing moisture – which means more rainfall, storms and flooding.

Storms and flooding are affecting many parts of the world, including the UK. Even extreme
cold weather is also thought to be another effect of climate change.

Fire is particularly merciless when it tears through any landscape, killing or harming
thousands of species of plants and those animals unable to escape. It is estimated that the
Australia fires of early 2020 killed or harmed nearly three billion animals. Some of the fires
were so enormous they even created their own weather events.

Polar and glacier ice melt and sea-level rise

Higher average global temperatures are also melting ice at the polar regions and in glaciers
in mountainous regions.

In the Arctic, which now experiences heatwaves, the sea ice disappears almost entirely in
summer – and the region is predicted to be completely ice-free by the mid-2030s.

Antarctic ice shelves have lost nearly 4 trillion metric tons of ice since the mid-1990s, with
warming ocean waters melting them faster than they can refreeze.

Melting polar ice leads to sea-level rise around the world, which (along with increased storm
surges) is starting to permanently re-shape coastal regions. This is already happening in the
Arctic, the South Pacific and parts of the southern US.

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