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Home > Healing Earth > Chapters > Global Climate Change > Global Climate Change and Science > Climate Change Impacts > Plants and Animals

Plants and Animals


Temperature and photoperiod play important roles in determining the timing of plant and animal life cycles. As the
global climate becomes warmer, species are stressed by temperature, water, and food extremes.
In Northern Europe, Russia, and North America, for example, many plants now start greening
up in spring a few days earlier than in the past in response to the warmer climate (Figure 20).

Looking Ahead

However, in regions that occur further away from the equator, such as in Scandinavian
countries at 60oN-70oN, the temperatures may warm earlier in spring, yet the seasonal
photoperiod will not change. Therefore, temperature and photoperiod become asynchronous,
occurring at different times. This timing mismatch affects crop pollination since the flowering of
plants (which depends on the photoperiod) and the arrival of pollinators such as bees (which is
dependent on the temperature) occur at different times. Decrease in crop pollination results in a
marked reduction of food supply.

In the upcoming
Global Climate
Change and Action
section, you will learn
how the U.S.
Environmental
Protection Agency is
collaborating with
Indigenous People to
learn more about
local changes in the
relationship between
climate and plant
pollination.

Figure 20. Changes in the onset of spring green up from 1982 to 2007 in North America based
on satellite observations. Green colors represent an advance trend while red colors represent a
delay trend. The white color indicates areas without good data or with no changes.
Onset of Spring
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Source: http://www.wired.com/images/article/full/2007/11/dissectionanddissent_1109_630w.jpg

In addition, major changes in rain and snow deposits will greatly affect wildlife and crop success. As land surface
temperatures rise, the land dries more rapidly and becomes more threatened by drought. At the same time, as
temperature increases, the amount of moisture that the air can hold increases exponentially. This heightens
precipitation intensity. Warmer climate thus creates both droughts and floods at different times, which affect the whole
biosphere.

Figure 21: This series of photographs show tiny young clams dissolving in acidified water.
CO2 is absorbed from the air by ocean water, acidifying the water and thus reducing the
ability of juvenile clams to grow their shells. As seen in the photos, where CO2 levels rise
progressively from left to right, 36-day-old clams (measured in microns) grown under
elevated CO2 levels are smaller than those grown under lower CO2 levels.
Adapted from: Effects of past, present, and future ocean carbon dioxide concentrations on the growth and survival of larval shellfish
https://data.globalchange.gov/article/10.1073/pnas.0913804107
Source: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/oceans#tab1-images

As noted above, oceanic microscopic organisms are threatened by the ocean acidification which is caused by
increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel emissions. Many of these marine organisms build
their protective external shells out of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which easily dissolves in acidic water, putting an
enormous stress on these tiny organisms (Figure 21). Since these microscopic organisms comprise the bottom of the
food chain, the stress put on them by ocean acidification has cascading impacts up the entire chain to the top
predators. Experiments suggest that coral reefs, mollusks, and sea urchins are particularly vulnerable to
acidification. Additionally, reproduction of diatoms, a major group of algae and a primary producer of ocean biomass
and atmospheric oxygen, is negatively affected.
Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse communities of life on the planet. They are threatened not only by
ocean acidification, but also by planetary warming which causes the corals to expel their endosymbionts or
zooxanthellae, resulting in a white, bleached appearance. This can lead to the loss of a coral reef that would
otherwise serve as a habitat for a rich diversity of coral reef fishes, and serve to protect many coastal island areas from
storm surges.

Questions to Consider
Keep a record of the food items you eat every day at your main meal. Go to the Union of Concerned Scientists
Climate Hot Map and see what impact global climate change may have on your food. How many of these food
items could you afford to lose before your health would be at risk? What would you do to replace the food items of
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your main meal that could be lost to global climate change?

Science has advanced our understanding of global climate change. We understand what drives climate change and
we understand the severe impacts climate change is having on environmental processes and human communities.
However, as Dale Jamieson states:
. . . the problem we face is not a purely scientific problem that can be solved by the accumulation of scientific
information. Science has alerted us to the problem, but the problem also concerns our values. It is about how we ought
to live, and how human beings ought to relate to each other and to the rest of nature. These are problems of ethics . . .
It is to these problems that we now turn.

Dale Jamieson, Ethics, Public Policy, and Global Warming, in Environmental Ethics, An Anthology, eds.,
Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2003), p. 372.

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