Impacts of Climate Change🔗

Climate impacts refer to the effects of changes in the Earth’s climate on people, economies, ecosystems, and infrastructure. These include reduced crop yields, more deaths due to extreme heat, and lower economic growth. Impacts may be caused directly by temperature increase, or by associated drivers such as CO₂ concentration and sea level rise.

Index of Impacts in En-ROADS🔗

Atmosphere🔗

Health and Economy🔗

Oceans🔗

Nature🔗

Big Messages🔗

Climate impacts can highlight the importance of even a small change in temperature. Many impacts don't increase steadily as temperatures rise. Instead, they can become much worse very quickly.
Mitigation brings immediate co-benefits, which are apparent by comparing the impact in 2030 or 2040 in the Baseline vs. the Current Scenario.

Key Dynamics🔗

Temperature: Most impacts are the result of global temperature increase or its consequences. Sea level rise, for example, is driven by a combination of melting ice and thermal expansion. Warmer oceans cause tropical cyclones to intensify in strength more quickly than in the past. Biodiversity declines when changing weather patterns and increasing heat cause ecosystems to shift or destabilize, altering species’ habitats.
CO₂ concentration: Ocean acidification, for example, is driven by an increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO₂. The oceans absorb about 30% of the CO₂ released into the atmosphere. Once dissolved in water, the CO₂ increases the acidity of the water through a series of chemical reactions. One important result is that less calcium carbonate is available, making it difficult for marine species to build seashells and coral skeletons.
Air pollution: Air pollution from energy is the result of particulate matter emissions from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. Transforming the energy system to use renewables and other sources of clean energy will immediately improve air quality.

Facilitation Tips🔗

Highlight climate impacts throughout an En-ROADS workshop: at the beginning, to motivate action; after creating a scenario of climate success, to illustrate the improvements; and to emphasize the need for adaptation and resilience, even in a successful scenario.
Maps, like those showing sea level rise, help people connect global changes to their local areas.

Equity Considerations🔗

Climate change disproportionately affects marginalized and vulnerable populations, including low-income communities, racial minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities. For example, many elderly people are more vulnerable to heatwaves and extreme weather events due to chronic health conditions, reduced ability to regulate body temperature, and socioeconomic factors such as limited financial resources and a higher likelihood of living alone.
Low-income communities often lack the resources to adapt or recover from climate impacts such as weather disasters, crop failures, or rising sea levels.

Videos🔗

Impacts of Climate Change

Model Structure🔗

Many of the climate impacts in En-ROADS are derived from research studies that have connected specific impacts to different global temperature scenarios. For more information on the climate impact and the study it is based on, view the graph description by clicking on the gray arrow on the top left of the graph title. Details on modeling are included in the En-ROADS Technical Reference.