The effect
of Global Warming can be seen all across the world everything from “glaciers
that are melting, plants and animals that are being forced from their habitat,
and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing” (Faigley, Seltzer).
Some Impacts from the increase in temperatures are already happening. National
Geographic points out a few of the effects that are occurring at the moment:
· Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth's poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice. · Researcher Bill Fraser has tracked the decline of the Adélie penguins on Antarctica, where their numbers have fallen from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in 30 years. · Sea level rise became faster over the last century. · Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas. · Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average. · Spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers. The insects have chewed up 4 million acres of spruce trees There are many more effects that are currently happening because of global warming. Effects like hot, dry weather that was the main cause of a record setting 2006 wild land fire season, with almost 100,000 fires and almost 10 million acres burned that is a 125 percent rice to the decade`s average. Also in the same year 225 peoples deaths were caused by heat waves in North America. Animals are probably some of the most affected by this heat increase. Polar bears are almost extinct because of hunting and global warming; melting arctic ice removes grounds that polar bears use to hunt. Food is getting harder and harder to acquire because the bears have to swim longer distances some bears actually drown before they can find another iceberg with all this extra swimming they have to use a lot of their fat reserves also. Seals are the polar bears number one source of nutrition but with all the hunting and global warming they’re numbers are also reducing drastically. The polar bear average weigh has dropped by about 21% between 1980 and 2004 and population has declined by 22% between 1987 and 2004. |