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Report: Climate change already impacting U.S., world
July 1, 2009—Climate change is already having visible impacts on the United States, and the choices made now will determine the severity of future impacts, according to a federal report released in June. The report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," finds that Americans are already being affected through increases in extreme weather, droughts, and wildfires caused by climate change.
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The future could hold more frequent and intense heat waves, increased heavy downpours, reduced summer runoff, increasing insect infestations, more wildfires, an increasingly acidic ocean, and local sea-level rises of more than three feet, according to the report. These climate changes could disrupt energy, water, and transportation systems; hurt crop and livestock production, fisheries, and tourism; increasingly threaten coastal homes and infrastructure, while losing coastal land to rising seas; and harm human health.
The report also examines climate change impacts by sector and region. A product of the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program, the report notes that implementing sizable and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible would significantly reduce the pace and overall amount of climate change.
The new study is in line with other recent reports that tackle the climate change issue on the global scale, in some cases finding even more drastic impacts, according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The reports come from such sources as the National Science Foundation (NSF); "The Lancet" and the University College London (UCL); the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF); and Columbia University, the United Nations University, and CARE International.
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