🌡️ Climate change as a multiplier
Climate change changes temperatures, rainfall patterns, and the frequency of extreme weather events.
Ecosystems are adapted to specific climate conditions. When the climate changes rapidly, many species cannot adapt or migrate fast enough, leading to population declines.
Why this is a multiplier: Climate change is an indirect human impact because it does not usually remove organisms immediately. Instead, it alters environmental conditions, increasing stress on ecosystems and making energy capture and transfer through food webs less efficient.
Climate change adds stress to ecosystems and worsens the effects of other human impacts such as habitat loss, pollution, and overexploitation.
🌡️ Climate Change
Climate change = turning up Earth's thermostat with greenhouse gases.
__Greenhouse gases allow sunlight to enter the atmosphere but absorb and re-emit heat, reducing the amount of energy that escapes to space and warming the planet.__
- Melting ice: Polar bears lose hunting grounds as Arctic ice shrinks 🐻❄️
- Rising seas: Low-lying islands like Tuvalu are disappearing
- Extreme weather: Stronger hurricanes, longer droughts, bigger wildfires
- Shifting habitats: Species move toward poles or up mountains to stay cool
Climate change is a multiplier — it makes ALL other human impacts worse!