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Ice sheets is being affected by climate change. As a result of the ice melting and releasing more water into the ocean, sea levels would increase. It's also causing polar soil to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, causing even more warming.

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Meltwater at the top of the Greenland ice sheet flows through a hole in the ice, down to the base. In recent years the ice has been melting faster, and water at the base causes the ice to move faster towards the ocean. (Image: University of Colorado)

Most of us do not live in polar regions. We do not come in contact with icebergs or ice sheets very often. Most of us have only seen these things in photographs. However, no matter where you live, the snow and ice of the Earth's cryosphere has an impact on your climate.

Because the cryosphere - the icy part of our planet - is so interconnected with other parts of the Earth system, what happens in the cryosphere affects the whole Earth. As climate change causes temperature to rise, ice melts. Much of this ice is in the Arctic and Antarctic, but the planet as a whole is affected by changes in these polar regions as ice melts. So what happens in the cryosphere does not stay in the cryosphere.

Some of the reasons that changes to the cryosphere affect the planet as a whole are because of feedbacks that cause more warming. Scientists are currently studying just how much the frozen places on Earth affect the rate of climate change. Below are some of the ways that the cryosphere has been affecting climate change through interactions with other parts of the system and feedbacks that increase the rate of global warming. Additionally, melting ice has other side effects on the planet - such as sea level rise.

Melting ice causes more warming.

When solar radiation hits snow and ice, approximately 90% of it is reflected back out to space. As global warming causes more snow and ice to melt each summer, the ocean and land that were underneath the ice are exposed at the Earth's surface. Because they are darker in color, the ocean and land absorb more incoming solar radiation, and then release the heat to the atmosphere. This causes more global warming. In this way, melting ice causes more warming and so more ice melts. This is known as a feedback. According to a recent scientific study that used computer models to predict the future of Arctic sea ice, there may be no more sea ice left in the Arctic Ocean during summer within the next few decades.

Melting permafrost releases greenhouse gases.

Global warming is causing soils in the polar regions that have been frozen for as much as 40,000 years to thaw. As they thaw, carbon trapped within the soils is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane. These gases, released to the atmosphere, cause more warming, which then thaws more the frozen soil.

Less ice on land means sea level rises.

Sea level has been rising about 1-2 millimeters each year as the Earth has become warmer. Some of the sea level rise is due to melting glaciers and ice sheets which add water to the oceans that was once trapped on land. Certain glaciers and ice sheets are particularly vulnerable. Global warming has caused them to be less stable, to move faster towards the ocean, and add more ice into the water. These areas with less stable ice include the Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted or moved into the ocean, global sea level would rise approximately 6.5 meters. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt or move into the ocean, global sea level would rise approximately 8 meters.

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Meltwater at the top of the Greenland ice sheet flows through a hole in the ice, down to the base. In recent years the ice has been melting faster, and water at the base causes the ice to move faster towards the ocean. (Image: University of Colorado)Most of us do not live in polar regions.

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Climate change is affecting ecosystems and agriculture.

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Climate change is affecting ecosystems and agriculture.

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climate change is increasing the temperature which has a harmful effect on the soil causing losses of soil carbon. The article discusses the front-free season( growing season) has continued to increase of a month or more.

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Key Points: During the past 30 years, there has been an increase in the length of the frost-free season over the contiguous United States and Alaska, relative to the 1979-2019 average. About the Indicator: Global daily freeze-thaw data are provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Freeze-Thaw Earth Systems Data Record, which represents one of the longest continuous global records from satellite-based observations.

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Human health is vulnerable to climate change. The changing environment is expected to cause more heat stress, an increase in waterborne diseases, poor air quality, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Extreme weather events can compound many of these health threats.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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The rate of change since the mid-20th century is unprecedented over millennia.

Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 800,000 years, there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era - and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth's orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.) Find out more about ice cores (external site).

The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun's energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.

Do scientists agree on climate change?

Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists - 97 percent - agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.

detailed answer

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century. Many of the science instruments NASA uses to study our climate focus on how these gases affect the movement of infrared radiation through the atmosphere. From the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response.

"Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal."

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth's climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.

References

References
Header image shows clouds imitating mountains as the sun sets after midnight as seen from Denali's backcountry Unit 13 on June 14, 2019. Credit: NPS/Emily Mesner

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Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. How do we know it's happening? Here's the evidence.

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This article talks about the effects of climate change for example water, energy, transportation, wildlife, agriculture, ecosystems, and human health.

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We often think about human-induced climate change as something that will happen in the future, but it is happening now. Ecosystems and people in the United States and around the world are affected by the ongoing process of climate change today.

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E.P.A to Sharply Limit Powerful Greenhouse Gases 

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E.P.A to Sharply Limit Powerful Greenhouse Gases 

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The article talks about the E.P.A moving on Monday to sharply reduce the use and production of powerful greenhouse gases. This regulation will take effect in 2022.

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The Biden administration is moving quickly to limit hydrofluorocarbons, the Earth-warming chemicals used in air-conditioning and refrigeration.

Air conditioners on a building in Manhattan last month. Credit... Andrew Kelly/Reuters

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency moved on Monday to sharply reduce the use and production of powerful greenhouse gases central to refrigeration and air-conditioning, part of the Biden administration's larger strategy of trying to slow the pace of global warming.

The agency proposed to regulate hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, a class of man-made chemicals that are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. The proposal is the first significant step the E.P.A. has taken under President Biden to curb climate change.

The move is also the first time the federal government has set national limits on HFCs, which were used to replace ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons in the 1980s but have turned out to be a significant driver of global warming. More than a dozen states have either banned HFCs or are formulating some restrictions.

And it is another sign, along with Mr. Biden's decision to rejoin the Paris climate accord and tohost a recent virtual climate summit - that the administration is reinserting the country into the internationalfight against global warming.

"This is incredibly significant," said Kristen N. Taddonio, a senior climate and energy adviser for the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, an environmental nonprofit group.

"By taking fast action on these short-lived climate pollutants, of which HFCs are the most potent, we can buy ourselves some time and actually help avoid climate tipping points," she said.

The regulation would begin to take effect in 2022 and would gradually reduce the production and importation of hydrofluorocarbons in the United States by 85 percent over the following 15 years. About 15 percent of HFCs would still be permitted because they have critical uses for which alternatives do not yet exist.

The E.P.A. estimated that by 2050 the rule would eliminate the equivalent of 4.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, or about three years' worth of emissions from America's power sector. That would help put the United States on a path toward meeting Mr. Biden's aggressive goal of cutting America's emissions roughly in half by 2035.

But the administration framed the new policy in economic terms. The E.P.A. estimated that the HFC rule would result in $283.9 billion in health and environmental benefits by the middle of the century by reducing climate-fueled wildfires, heat-related health problems and property damage from extreme weather events.

"This action is good for our planet and our economy," Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the E.P.A. said in a statement, adding that it would help American businesses that are producing "climate-safe" alternatives to HFCs to succeed at home and abroad.

Several chemical companies and refrigerant producers agreed.

Since 2016 when nearly 200 nations signed an accord in Kigali, Rwanda to phase out HFCs in favor of alternatives that are less dangerous to the climate, a number of major producers ramped up their efforts to produce coolants such as hydrofluoroolefins.

The Chemours Company, for instance, has spent about $1 billion to create an alternative coolant that "can achieve many of the same results from a cooling perspective as you can get from the HFCs without the environmental impact," said Thomas Sueta, a spokesman for the multinational chemical giant.

Critics say that the new regulations will harm consumers. Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, warned that restaurants, supermarkets and others that use commercial refrigeration would face higher costs when they bought new equipment or repaired old systems.

Kevin Fay, executive director of the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, an industry coalition organized in 1980 to address the issue of ozone depletion, said because companies have already been transitioning, the policy will not mean higher prices for autos, appliances and other products.

The E.P.A.'s action is backed by both environmental groups and the business community, which jointly championed bipartisan legislation passed by Congress in December to tackle HFCs.

But the speed with which the E.P.A. wrote and moved forward with the proposed regulation is unusual and underscores the urgency that the Biden administration is placing on climate change, said Francis Dietz, vice president for public affairs at the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, a trade group.

They're really moving swiftly," he said. "It says they're very serious about this."

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The chemicals used in air-conditioning systems are far more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. Credit... Al Bello/Getty Images

Like methane, HFCs have short-term warming effects far more powerful than carbon dioxide, but they don't stay in the atmosphere as long. Scientists have estimated that reducing these types of greenhouse gases can have a palpable impact, avoiding an estimated 0.6 degrees Celsius of warming by midcentury.

Yet climate change itself appears to be causing a rise in emissions from the pollutant. According to E.P.A. data, emissions from HFCs rose by 4 million metric tons between 2018 and 2019 - a spike that analysts attributed to record-breaking heat in the United States that drove demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration.

"That's the rub of warming and cooling technologies and why putting in place restrictions on HFCs early is so important," said Kate Larson, a director at the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm.

As part of a sweeping coronavirus relief bill, Congress last year approved language directing the E.P.A. to curb HFCs. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, who at the time was the minority leader, called it "the single biggest victory in the fight against climate change to pass this body in a decade."

David Doniger, senior strategic director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate and clean energy program, called eliminating HFCs "absolutely critical" to ensuring that global average temperatures do not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels. That's the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth will face irreparable damage.

"If your goal is to keep the total warming to 1.5 degrees, you cannot do that if you add another half-degree of HFCs on top of everything else," he said.

The E.P.A. said it had performed an "environmental justice analysis" that found cuts to planet-warming emissions "would benefit populations that may be especially vulnerable to damages associated with climate change, such as the very young, elderly, poor, disabled and Indigenous populations."

Under the plan, the E.P.A. will set a baseline for the amount of HFCs that are produced and consumed, and use that to establish a cap on the levels that can be created and imported into the United States. The agency will then establish a methodology for allocating allowances to companies to continue producing and importing HFCs for the years 2022 and 2023, as well as developing an enforcement system.

Under the law, allowances to companies will gradually decrease as the market for alternatives grows. There will be a 45-day comment period before the E.P.A. moves to finalize the regulation.

In the last days of the Obama administration, 197 nations, including the United States, signed the Kigali accord to phase out HFCs. President Donald J. Trump never brought the agreement to the Senate for ratification. Mr. Biden has pledged to send the Kigali amendment to the Senate.

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E.P.A. to Sharply Limit Powerful Greenhouse Gases

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The Biden administration is moving quickly to limit hydrofluorocarbons, the Earth-warming chemicals used in air-conditioning and refrigeration. WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency moved on Monday to sharply reduce the use and production of powerful greenhouse gases central to refrigeration and air-conditioning, part of the Biden administration's larger strategy of trying to slow the pace of global warming.

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Climate Change Affects Animals in a Truly Devastating Way

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Climate Change Affects Animals in a Truly Devastating Way

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This article is talks about how Climate Change affects animals habitats thus in the future leading to mass extinctions.

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Source: Getty

Animals rely on their environment to survive. In theory, so do humans, but because of how built our communities, economies, and industries are, we are more likely to forget that we need the very planet we are destroying... #AnInconvenientTruth. But animals do not have such a luxury, as they inherently know they need water, food, and other resources the planet provides, in order to live. Sadly, as climate change alters the state of the planet, animals are adversely affected.

How does climate change affect animals? It poses a disruption to animals' natural habitats, resulting in loss of animal life and even extinction of certain species. Keep reading for more information on how climate change impacts animal life.

How does climate change affect livestock?

Livestock includes farm animals, which play an important role in the food industry; one way in which climate change impacts livestock through its food supply. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), elevated levels of CO2 in the air caused by global warming lowers protein and nitrogen content in soybean plants.

Such a decline could negatively impact livestock grazing in pastures, which could lead to food shortages, starvation, or sickness from a lack of nutrients.

How does climate change affect Arctic animals?

In the same way that climate change reduces livestock's natural environment - the pastures in which they graze - climate change reduces Arctic animals' environment. According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), animals such as walruses and polar bears rely on the Arctic's sea ice.

As the average global temperature warms, the sea ice vanishes, leaving less and less environment for polar bears and walruses to live on, walk on, and to stay out of the water. In fact, in 2008, the polar bear was added to the Endangered Species List as a threatened species, making the polar bear the first to be added due to global warming.

How does climate change affect marine life?

As the average global temperature warms, so do the Earth's oceans. This causes tremendous upset in marine ecosystems, particularly affecting coral reefs, which are sensitive to temperature changes. Hot temperatures can cause coral reefs to become heat-stressed and bleach, affecting coral algae levels.

This leads to coral starvation, and because coral reefs serve as homes to many other species, this is a critical loss.

How does climate change affect forests?

Global warming and climate change contribute to more frequent extreme weather events. These events can include drought and heat waves. While extreme weather is a danger for human life, it can also negatively impact animals' environments. Forests included. According to EDF, "Milder winters and longer summers allow tree-killing insects to thrive. Meanwhile, trees weakened by prolonged drought have lower defense mechanisms."

Without the natural cycle of seasons that the area is supposed to receive, forests and other natural habitats can't function properly. If they are not functioning properly, then the animals that typically rely on that environment cannot survive there. This can lead to animal deaths and even extinction.

Climate change destroys the environment, especially natural habitats that animals rely on for food, shelter, and other vital resources. If coral reefs, jungles, oceans, meadows, and other natural areas are so significantly impacted by climate change, local plants and animals will recede or die off. This could ultimately impact the entire food chain, causing a mass extinction of species on a global scale.

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Climate Change Affects Animals in a Truly Devastating Way

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How does climate change affect animals? Here's what you need to know about the ongoing climate crisis' devastating affect on animals worldwide.

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How climate change is fueling record-breaking California wildfires, heat and smog

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How climate change is fueling record-breaking California wildfires, heat and smog

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this artical talks sbout how since its hotter wild fires are more common and how they have costed millins in damage to land all around californa and other places

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This article talks about how the ice sheets are crumbling faster then we expected. It also states how Alaska sea tempertures are rising due to climate change.

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Judson Jones and Brandon Miller, CNNImagery from NASA Earth Observatory

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It can be challenging to visualize the effects of climate change when it happens over time and on such a large scale. But NASA has been snapping satellite images for decades now.

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This article talks about how because of all the fires and change in soils and everything that has happened to this forest it actually started putting out more carbon dioxide instead of absorbing it and says we can no longer depend on the forest to absorb man made  carbon pollution.

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Deforestation in the Amazon, including through fires, increased nearly four-fold in 2019

The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last decade than it absorbed, according to a stunning report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world's largest tropical forest to help absorb manmade carbon pollution.

From 2010 through 2019, Brazil's Amazon basin gave off 16.6 billion tonnes of CO ₂, while drawing down only 13.9 billion tonnes, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study looked at the volume of CO ₂ absorbed and stored as the forest grows, versus the amounts released back into the atmosphere as it has been burned down or destroyed.

"We half-expected it, but it is the first time that we have figures showing that the Brazilian Amazon has flipped, and is now a net emitter," said co-author Jean-Pierre Wigneron, a scientist at France's National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA).

"We don't know at what point the changeover could become irreversible," he told AFP in an interview.

The study also showed that deforestation-through fires and clear-cutting-increased nearly four-fold in 2019 compared to either of the two previous years, from about one million hectares (2.5 million acres) to 3.9 million hectares, an area the size of the Netherlands.

"Brazil saw a sharp decline in the application of environmental protection policies after the change of government in 2019," the INRA said in a statement.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was sworn into office on January 1, 2019.

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide have been a crucial ally as the world struggles to curb CO ₂ emissions, which topped 40 billion tonnes in 2019.

Over the last half century, plants and soil have consistently absorbed about 30 percent of those emissions, even as those emissions increased by 50 percent over than period.

Oceans have also helped, soaking up more than 20 percent.

The Amazon basin contains about half of the world's tropical rainforests

Tipping points
The Amazon basin contains about half of the world's tropical rainforests, which are more effective at soaking up and storing carbon that other types of vegetation.

If the region were to be come a net source rather than a "sink" of CO ₂, tackling the climate crisis will be that much harder.

Using new methods of analysing satellite data developed at the University of Oklahoma, the international team of researchers also showed for the first time that degraded forests were a more significant source of planet-warming CO ₂ emissions that outright deforestation.

Over the same 10-year period, degradation-caused by fragmentation, selective cutting, or fires that damage but do not destroy trees-caused three times more emissions that outright destruction of forests.

The data examined in the study only covers Brazil, which holds some 60 percent of the Amazonian rainforest.

Taking the rest of region into account, "the Amazon basin as a whole is probably (carbon) neutral," said Wigneron.

"But in the other countries with Amazon rainforest, deforestation is on the rise too, and drought has become more intense."

Climate change looms as a major threat, and could-above a certain threshold of global warming-see the continent's rainforest tip into a much drier savannah state, recent studies have shown.

This would have devastating consequences not only to the region, which currently harbours a significant percentage of the world's biodiversity, but globally as well.

The Amazon rainforest is one of a dozen so-called "tipping points" in the climate system.

Ice sheets atop Greenland and the West Antarctic, Siberian permafrost loaded with CO ₂ and methane, monsoon rains in South Asia, coral reef ecosystems, the jet stream-all are vulnerable to point-of-no-return transitions that would radically alter the world as we know it.

More information: Yuanwei Qin et al. Carbon loss from forest degradation exceeds that from deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, Nature Climate Change (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-01026-5

© 2021 AFP

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Climate change: Amazon may be turning from friend to foe

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The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last decade than it absorbed, according to a stunning report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world's largest tropical forest to help absorb manmade carbon pollution.

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Climate change has serious expensive consequences tropical cyclones, floods, heavy rainfall, droughts, and migration.

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Climate change has serious expensive consequences tropical cyclones, floods, heavy rainfall, droughts, and migration.

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Cyclones, rainfall, floods and droughts, climate-induced migration: The world witnessed it all in 2020
This is the second in a 2-part series on impact of climate change on the world in 2020. Read the first part here.
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic heavily dominated the year 2020. Climate crisis continued to play out at the same time; 2020 may end up as the third-warmest year on record; the planet was warmer by 1.2 degrees Celsius from January to October than the pre-industrial average measured between 1850 and 1900; and cyclones, floods and wildfires caused large-scale devastation.
Cyclones
Extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones, floods, heavy rainfall and droughts - well-known and expensive consequences of global warming - impacted many parts of the world. The most dramatic was the record-breaking Atlantic Hurricane Season that concluded on November 30.

The season witnessed 30 named storms from June 1 to November 30, which is the highest ever recorded. The storms also formed much earlier in the year than they usually do, breaking records for the earliest storms in recorded history. A record number of these storms also made landfall along the United States coast.

The sheer number meant that they were fairly regular and at one time in August, even created a scare of the formation of a mega hurricane when storms Marco and Laura formed in quick succession in the Gulf Mexico.

In September, another rare event occurred in the Atlantic Ocean when a five-storm system - hurricanes, storms and depressions - were brewing in the ocean at the same time for only the second time on record.

The five active storms were Hurricane Paulette, Hurricane Sally, tropical storm Teddy, tropical storm Vicky and tropical depression Rene. The last time such an event occurred was nearly half-a-century ago, in September 1971.

A strong hurricane did form at the very end of the season when hurricane Iota reached almost category 5 with wind speeds of greater than 250 kilometre per hour on November 16. The storm made landfall along the Nicaragua coast on November 16 and brought heavy rainfall and flooding in the country and its neighbours in Central America.

This was just a couple of weeks after another category 4 hurricane Eta had made landfall just 24 km from the landfall point of Iota. Another feature of the storms and hurricanes all around the world was their rapid intensification, which usually happens over warmer than usual sea waters.

The wind speeds of hurricane Iota increased from 137 km/hr to 250 km/hr in 24 hours; this qualified as rapid intensification. It was the third storm since September to gain wind speeds of 164 km/hr in 36 hours, according to Sam Lillo, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States. He added that before 2020, only eight storms had undergone such rapid intensification.

Among the 30 storms in the Atlantic Ocean this season, 10 showed signs of rapid intensification. Another storm which grew to humongous proportions fast was super Typhoon Goni in the western Pacific Ocean. It gained wind speeds of 233 km / hr in 54 hours.

It peaked at a wind speed of 315 km / hr, making it the strongest tropical cyclone (hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones) of 2020. It crashed into the Philippines, devastating the island country.

Many storms and cyclones also affected other Asian countries, such as cyclones Amphan, Nisarga, Nivar and Burevi in India and African countries, and cyclone Gati in Somalia which brought two years' worth of rains in two days.

Apart from the storms, heavy rainfall and flooding in several parts of Asia and Africa led to loss of human lives, property and livelihoods.

The most affected were the Sahel and Greater Horn regions of Africa and China, India, Korea and Japan regions of Asia. South America, on the other hand, experienced severe droughts with northern Argentina, Paraguay and western areas of Brazil being some of the worst affected.

Brazil alone recorded agricultural losses of $3 billion. The heat and dry conditions led to a series of never-seen-before wildfires in many parts of the world, the most prominent being the bushfires in Australia, the forest fires of the Amazon rainforest and the ever raging California fires.
Migration
The WMO State of the Global Climate report stated that "climate and weather events have triggered significant population movements and have severely affected vulnerable people on the move, including in the Pacific region and Central America". Climate-induced human migration is one of the least understood impacts of anthropogenic climate change.

Human migration due to changing climate happens primarily in middle-income and agricultural-dependent countries, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change September 14.

The impacts of climate change that prompted migration were mainly changes in temperature, rainfall variability and rapid onset events such as storms, cyclones and floods, the study added.

The research paper was published by a group of scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Austria and the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria.

"Environmental factors can drive migration, but the size of the effects depends on the particular economic and sociopolitical conditions in the countries," said Roman Hoffmann, lead author of the study and a scientist at PIK and the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

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Looking back in 2020: The world in grip of extreme weather events

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Cyclones, rainfall, floods and droughts, climate-induced migration: The world witnessed it all in 2020 This is the second in a 2-part series on impact of climate change on the world in 2020. Read the first part here. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic heavily dominated the year 2020.

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This article covers the NOAA , a US scientific agency that tracks weather data and the data they've collected over the years which shows signs of climate change affecting the US.

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New US weather data shows 'obvious' effects of climate change

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NOAA report on 'new normals' in climate over past decade shows a hotter US, thanks to climate change.

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This article talks about all the steps not only America is taking to tackle climate change, but other countries as well.

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Countries only have only a limited time in which to act if the world is to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Here are five reasons why 2021 could be a crucial year in the fight against global warming.

Covid-19 was the big issue of 2020, there is no question about that.

But I'm hoping that, by the end of 2021, the vaccines will have kicked in and we'll be talking more about climate than the coronavirus.

2021 will certainly be a crunch year for tackling climate change.

Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, told me he thinks it is a "make or break" moment for the issue.

So, in the spirit of New Year's optimism, here's why I believe 2021 could confound the doomsters and see a breakthrough in global ambition on climate.

1. The crucial climate conference

In November 2021, world leaders will be gathering in Glasgow for the successor to the landmark Paris meeting of 2015.

Paris was important because it was the first time virtually all the nations of the world came together to agree they all needed to help tackle the issue.

The problem was the commitments countries made to cutting carbon emissions back then fell way short of the targets set by the conference.

In Paris, the world agreed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by trying to limit global temperature increases to 2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The aim was to keep the rise to 1.5C if at all possible.

We are way off track. On current plans the world is expected to breach the 1.5C ceiling within 12 years or less and to hit 3C of warming by the end of the century.

Under the terms of the Paris deal, countries promised to come back every five years and raise their carbon-cutting ambitions. That was due to happen in Glasgow in November 2020.

The pandemic put paid to that and the conference was bumped forward to this year.

So, Glasgow 2021 gives us a forum at which those carbon cuts can be ratcheted up.

And there has already been progress.

The most important announcement on climate change last year came completely out of the blue.

At the UN General Assembly in September, the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, announced that China aimed to go carbon neutral by 2060.

Environmentalists were stunned. Cutting carbon has always been seen as an expensive chore yet here was the most polluting nation on earth - responsible for some 28% of world emissions - making an unconditional commitment to do just that regardless of whether other countries followed its lead.

That was a complete turnaround from past negotiations, when everyone's fear was that they might end up incurring the cost of decarbonising their own economy, while others did nothing but still enjoyed the climate change fruits of their labour.

The UK was the first major economy in the world to make a legally binding net zero commitment in June 2019. The European Union followed suit in March 2020.

Since then, Japan and South Korea have joined what the UN estimates is now a total of over 110 countries that have set net zero target for mid-century. Together, they represent more than 65% of global emissions and more than 70% of the world economy, the UN says.

With the election of Joe Biden in the United States, the biggest economy in the world has now re-joined the carbon cutting chorus.

These countries now need to detail how they plan to achieve their lofty new aspirations - that will be a key part of the agenda for Glasgow - but the fact that they are already saying they want to get there is a very significant change.

There is a good reason why so many countries are now saying they plan to go net zero: the collapsing cost of renewables is completely changing the calculus of decarbonisation.

In October 2020, the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organisation, concluded that the best solar power schemes now offer "the cheapest source of electricity in history".

Renewables are already often cheaper than fossil fuel power in much of the world when it comes to building new power stations.

And, if the nations of the world ramp up their investments in wind, solar and batteries in the next few years, prices are likely to fall even further to a point where they are so cheap it will begin to make commercial sense to shut down and replace existing coal and gas power stations.

That is because the cost of renewables follows the logic of all manufacturing - the more you produce, the cheaper it gets. It's like pushing on an open door - the more you build the cheaper it gets and the cheaper it gets the more you build.

Think what this means: investors won't need to be bullied by green activists into doing the right thing, they will just follow the money. And governments know that by scaling up renewables in their own economies, they help to accelerate the energy transition globally, by making renewables even cheaper and more competitive everywhere.

4. Covid changes everything

The coronavirus pandemic has shaken our sense of invulnerability and reminded us that it is possible for our world to be upended in ways we cannot control.

It has also delivered the most significant economic shock since the Great Depression.

In response, governments are stepping forward with stimulus packages designed to reboot their economies.

And the good news is it has rarely - if ever - been cheaper for governments to make these kind of investments. Around the world, interest rates are hovering around zero, or even negative.

This creates an unprecedented opportunity to - in the now familiar phrase - "build back better".

The European Union and Joe Biden's new administration in the US have promised trillions of dollars of green investments to get their economies going and kick-start the process of decarbonisation.

Both are saying they hope other countries will join them - helping drive down the cost of renewables globally. But they are also warning that alongside this carrot, they plan to wield a stick - a tax on imports of countries that emit too much carbon.

The idea is this may help induce carbon-cutting laggards - like Brazil, Russia, Australia and Saudi Arabia - to come onside too.

The bad news is that, according to the UN, developed nations are spending 50% more on sectors linked to fossil fuels than on low-carbon energy.

The falling cost of renewable and the growing public pressure for action on climate is also transforming attitudes in business.

There are sound financial reasons for this. Why invest in new oil wells or coal power stations that will become obsolete before they can repay themselves over their 20-30-year life?

Indeed, why carry carbon risk in their portfolios at all?

The logic is already playing out in the markets. This year alone, Tesla's rocketing share price has made it the world's most valuable car company.

Meanwhile, the share price of Exxon - once the world's most valuable company of any kind - fell so far that it got booted out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average of major US corporations.

At the same time there is growing momentum behind the movement to get businesses to embed climate risk into their financial decision making.

The aim is to make it mandatory for businesses and investors to show that their activities and investments are making the necessary steps to transition to a net zero world.

Seventy central banks are already working to make this happen, and building these requirements into the world's financial architecture will be a key focus for the Glasgow conference.

It is still all to play for.

So, there is good reason for hope but it is far from a done deal.

To stand a reasonable chance of hitting the 1.5C target we need to halve total emissions by the end of 2030, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-backed body that collates the science needed to inform policy.

What that means is making the sort of emissions reductions achieved in 2020 thanks to the massive international lockdowns every year to the end of the decade. Yet emissions are already edging back to the levels they were in 2019.

The truth is lots of countries have expressed lofty ambitions for cutting carbon but few have yet got strategies in place to meet those goals.

The challenge for Glasgow will be getting the nations of the world to sign up to policies that will start reducing emissions now. The UN says it wants to see coal phased out completely, an end to all fossil fuel subsidies and a global coalition to reach net zero by 2050.

That remains a very tall order, even if global sentiments on tackling global warming are beginning to change.

Follow Justin on Twitter.

I've travelled all over the world for the BBC and seen evidence of environmental damage and climate change everywhere. It's the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Tackling it means changing how we do virtually everything. We are right to be anxious and afraid at the prospect, but I reckon we should also see this as a thrilling story of exploration, and I'm delighted to have been given the chance of a ringside seat as chief environment correspondent.

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Why 2021 could be turning point for tackling climate change

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Countries only have only a limited time in which to act if the world is to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Here are five reasons why 2021 could be a crucial year in the fight against global warming. Covid-19 was the big issue of 2020, there is no question about that.

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Ice is melting at a very fast rate seeing as about 3% of extra energy trapped in Earth's system by climate change is turning ice into water.

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The Oceans Melting Greenland mission carried out depth and salinity measurements of Greenland's fjords by boat and aircraft. (NASA)

Global ice loss has increased rapidly over the past two decades, and scientists are still underestimating just how much sea levels could rise, according to alarming new research published this month.

From the thin ice shield covering most of the Arctic Ocean to the mile-thick mantle of the polar ice sheets, ice losses have soared from about 760 billion tons per year in the 1990s to more than 1.2 trillion tons per year in the 2010s, a new study released Monday shows. That is an increase of more than 60 percent, equating to 28 trillion tons of melted ice in total - and it means that roughly 3 percent of all the extra energy trapped within Earth's system by climate change has gone toward turning ice into water.

"That's like more than 10,000 'Back to the Future' lightning strikes per second of energy melting ice around-the-clock since 1994," said William Colgan, an ice-sheet expert at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. "That is just a bonkers amount of energy."

There is good reason to think the rate of ice melt will continue to accelerate. A second, NASA-backed study on the Greenland ice sheet, for instance, finds that no less than 74 major glaciers that terminate in deep, warming ocean waters are being severely undercut and weakened.

Scientists descended into Greenland's perilous ice caverns - and came back with a worrying message

And it asserts that the extent of this effect, along with its implications for rising seas, is still being discounted by the global scientific community.

Failing to fully account for the role of ocean undercutting means sea-level rise from the ice sheets may be underestimated by "at least a factor of 2," the new paper in the journal Science Advances finds.

"It's like cutting the feet off the glacier rather than melting the whole body," said Eric Rignot, a study co-author and a glacier researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Irvine. "You melt the feet and the body falls down, as opposed to melting the whole body."

"I think this is an example that the current projections are conservative," Rignot said. "As we peer below we realize these feedbacks are kicking in faster than we thought."

Together, the two studies present a worrying picture.

The first finds that the current ice losses, which are accelerating quickly, are on pace with the worst scenarios for sea-level rise put out by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That expert body found that ice sheets could drive as much as 16 inches of sea-level rise by 2100.

But on top of that, the new NASA work on Greenland suggests that the IPCC, whose sea-level projections have long been faulted as being conservative, could underestimate future sea-level rise if the panel, which has a new report expected later this year, does not take full account of the power of the ocean to knock the ice backward and undermine it.

The first study, in the journal The Cryosphereand led by University of Leeds researcher Thomas Slater, is basically an enormous work of accounting. It tallies losses from the vast Greenland ice sheet, to the jagged peaks of the Himalayas and then southward to Antarctica during the 23-year period from 1994 through 2017.

Not all the ice the planet has lost translates directly into rising seas. For instance, 7.6 trillion tons, the largest single total, comes from the melting of the floating ice cover of the Arctic Ocean, which does not raise seas at all. Nor do the 6.5 trillion tons subtracted from Antarctic ice shelves, as those, too, were already afloat.

Still, the loss of floating ice paves the way for the unlocking of ice on land in Greenland and Antarctica, where 99 percent of all the planet's fresh water sits in frozen form, crushing down the invisible landforms beneath it. Greenland and Antarctica together have lost 6.3 trillion tons since 1994, the research finds, leaving out the past three years, which would surely add at least another trillion on top of that.

Greenland's ice losses have septupled and are now in line with its highest sea-level scenario, scientists say

So far, the world's mountain glaciers have actually been keeping pace with the ice sheets, losing 6.1 trillion tons of ice over the same time period and thus adding roughly the same amount to sea level. Over time - probably starting right around now - the polar ice sheets will begin to massively outdistance the losses from mountain glaciers and become the dominant drivers of global sea-level rise.

"It is no surprise that the ice on our planet is melting," said Robin Bell, an expert on the polar ice sheets at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "We have turned up the temperature, and just like you can watch an ice cube in your glass melt on a hot summer day, our actions are melting our planet's ice."

The question now becomes: Just how fast will climate change lead to the melting of the biggest and thickest ice, the ice atop Greenland and Antarctica?

Where Greenland's toes dip into the sea, ice is melting

That's where the results of a six-year NASA campaign to study the influence of warming ocean waters on the melting of Greenland's glaciers have some unsettling news.

Together with the University of Leeds study, the NASA research helps show why global ice loss is likely to further speed up as global warming continues. One of the main mechanisms causing Greenland's glaciers to flow faster into the sea, unlocking inland ice and allowing it to slide toward the coast as well, is the encroachment of warm water underneath the ice in the many deep fjords of coastal Greenland.

Scientists have observed accelerating ice loss in nearly every sector of the Greenland ice sheet. While researchers have suspected that warming ocean waters, rather than increasing air temperatures alone, may be behind the melting of glaciers in typically frigid northwest Greenland, for example, the evidence had previously been lacking.

The new study, led by glaciologist Mike Wood, alsoof UC-Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, relies on measurements taken via hundreds of instruments deployed by aircraft and ships for the past six years, revealing the shape of the land that lurks under the ice where 226 glaciers terminate in the sea, as well as the temperature structure of waters coming into contact with the ice.

Glaciers that flow into Greenland's deepest fjords are losing the most ice, Wood said. The 74 glaciers situated in deep, steep-walled valleys accounted for nearly half of Greenland's total ice loss between 1992 and 2017, the study found. Greenland is now the largest contributor to global sea-level rise.

"In these deep fjords, warm water lurks hundreds of feet below the ocean surface, melting the glaciers from below," Wood said. "When those warm waters become even warmer - a phenomenon we saw through the early 2000s - the melt increases, causing the glaciers to recede, become unstable and lose ice."

The science produced by the six-year field campaign, known as Oceans Melting Greenland, may force modelers to rethink their estimates for future ice loss, not just in Greenland but also for glaciers where similar dynamics are at work in Antarctica, such as in the West Antarctic ice sheet.

The NASA-led research shows that the undercutting of glaciers by relatively mild ocean waters explains why so many of Greenland's glaciers have sped their movement into the ocean, adding to sea-level rise, while some others have not accelerated as much.

In many coastal locations, relatively mild, salty waters sit below a layer of colder, fresher water in glacial fjords. These mild waters are coming into contact with the base of glaciers, where ice meets bedrock, which destabilizes the ice.

"A large amount of a glacier's stability depends on ice at its base," Wood said. "Remove it and you destabilize the whole thing, like Achilles' heel."

At the same time, during the summer months, meltwater from inland areas can flow all the way to the base of glaciers that end in the sea and pour into the fjords. This fresh water can drag some of the heavier, warm water toward the surface, accelerating melting further.

The NASA data shows that the shape of the land undergirding glaciers and the water temperatures in coastal areas help determine the rate of Greenland's ice loss, but this information isn't being translated yet into projections for sea-level rise.

"Very few ice-sheet models include that ice process at the frontal margin with realistic forcing," Rignot said. If models were to include undercutting, their estimates of sea-level rise from the faster loss of coastal glaciers could be up to twice what they are now, the study shows.

"I think that's a big deal," Rignot said. "You have to account for ocean temperatures in fjords and undercutting. If it's not in your model, you won't get the prediction right."

The Greenland results add urgency for research into the mechanisms that are destabilizing ice in Antarctica, where melting from warming oceans coming into contact with the base of glaciers is the main contributing factor, rather than increasing air temperatures.

"Because scientific progress is so often built small step on top of small step, I am not surprised by their findings," said Twila Moon, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo, who wasn't involved in either study. "But their results are still devastating, further confirming that we are losing ice both from a warming atmosphere and from a warming ocean."

"Ice loss is not a process that will stop itself," Moon said. "We humans are the ones with our hand on the climate control knob, and our decisions are the most important in determining the future of Greenland ice."

Today's Headlines The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning.

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Earth is now losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. And it's going to get worse.

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Global ice loss has increased rapidly over the past two decades, and scientists are still underestimating just how much sea levels could rise, according to alarming new research published this month.

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Over the last decade in California there has been warmer temperatures from the deserts to the mountains and Valley to coastal areas. All of the regions in California have been affected

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There are some record breaking weather and climate disasters that occurred around the U.S., during the year 2020, that caused billions of dollars worth of damages.

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This talks about 2020 being one of the warmest years yet, tying with 2016. The greenhouse gasses, human activities, and carbon dioxide and methane are responsible for these temperature rises

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NASA is a global leader in studying Earth’s changing climate.

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A close-by fire has burned 2000 acres and the fire department has almost contained the fire, they're currently at 75% containment.