Question: how could global warming effect us?

James Pope answered on 11 Mar 2015:

Hi Visar,

Cheers for asking this question of me here, I wouldn’t have been able to give you my best answer in the Live Chat.

The likely impact of global warming here in Britain is that our weather will become more changeable. We can expect that we will have more unseasonal weather, so mild winters but also colder wetter summers. This will be the result of the battle that will rage between warmer ocean currents coming past us from the tropics and changes in the Arctic air trying to push down. The change in the Arctic air is cause by the reduction in Arctic sea ice.
Other than that British life will be rather unaffected most likely by global warming, but we would always have to be ready for big flooding events like last winter or sudden snows as well as heatwaves. Sea Level rise in the next 90 years is predicted to be only 18-59 cm, it could maybe make 1m (100 cm), but not so likely. Most of this because the warmer ocean expands, not a lot from ice melting.

Elsewhere in the world it won’t be so easy. Life is likely to become much harder in Mediterranean Europe as temperatures rise and rainfall decreases especially for Greece. The Sahara desert will expand south and in general life is probably going to be even harder in much of central Africa, regions that already suffer from regular famines.

The big question in Asia is around the Asian Monsoon, which brings vital rainfall to the region and is crucial to growing rice, the regions staple food. At present we do not know what will happen to the Monsoon, will it weaken, strengthen or change when it occurs? There is a lot of research at the moment, with my friend Dr Lynz Foz (https://vanadiumj11.iasuk.ddev.site/profile/lyndseyfox) is on a ship called the Joides Resolution at the moment, part of a team of scientists drilling sediment cores to understand how it has changed in the last 30 million years or so.

Life in Australia is already hard, with fresh water a crucial resource and the risk of forest fires. It is likely that these things will only get worse with global warming. In South America, it is likely that life will be good in the southern area, but tougher in the North of countries such as Brazil. There is a lot of debate about whether the Amazon rainforest will grow bigger or shrink under climate change, and that debate rages on.

In North America, the southern states of the USA may struggle with drought, California has seen some massive droughts in recent years and it is likely thata cross the USA this will get worse. Additionally warmer tropical waters will probably see an increase in the number of stronger hurricanes that hit the country. The northern states and Canada will do ok under global warming and some regions may become more productive for farming.

Finally, in Antarctica, we expect to see more collapse of ice shelves like the Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002, but most of the ice sheet will survive to 2100.

The main problem is that CO2 lasts a long time, and will be around for a thousand years, so what we release now will be warming our planet for centuries to come. Over longer terms it will get warmer and we will see more ice sheet melt and sea level rise, but hopefully we will be adapting well to the other changes.

This is really long, but I hope it is what you wanted to know.