Carley Farnsworth

Mr. Lensing
AP Environmental Science
10 March 2016
Climate Change: A Meta-Analysis Review
Climate Basics. Climate is defined as the weather conditions prevailing in an area in
general or over a long period and scientifically a long period is 30 years or more. Climate is long
term and can be used to study different things like the effects of climate change and the overall
warming of the earth. Climate is used to compare trends in temperatures, precipitation, classify
different biomes and study different habitats of animals.
Anthropogenic Climate Change. The term anthropogenic normally applies when
usually talking about something science or math related and refers to a change originating from
humans. Humans today are having a huge impact on global climate and are increasing the rate in
which our earth warms. It is generally accepted that humans are having negative effects on our
earth by our everyday actions. Human behavior is integral not only for causing global climate
1
change but also responding and adapting to it
. We are constantly emitting gases into the air

and we are slowly helping the world speed up the rate in which it warms.
Effects. There are several negative effects to anthropogenic climate change and climate
change is having huge impacts on the globe and will continue in the future. One issue is the
extremes of weather disasters, such as storms, and floods. Climate change impacts temperature,
water supply, precipitation levels, seas levels, and so many more elements of the earth. The
distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies have shifted towards higher temperature
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than increase
. Hot, extreme areas of the Earth's surface went from 1% of the Earth's

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surface to 10%.
This goes to show how fast and severely out globe is heating up and

causing areas to dry up. An example of these changes is in Syria, where there are major
precipitation changes that are linked to the rising sea-level pressure in the Eastern Mediterranean
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which is an effect of climate change
. This major precipitation change is causing changes

in their ecosystem and in the amount of resources available to them.The first 15 years of the 21st
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century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century in global warming
. We are

constantly increasing the rate in which we contribute to global warming. One of the most
alarming aspect is that climate change shifts climatic niches on 3 axis and biodiversity loss
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could lead to the sixth mass extinction
. If we continue at the rate we are at, we could have

the sixth mass extinction making it harder for humans to live and thrive.

Potential Mitigation Strategies. Mitigation means the action of reducing the severity,
seriousness, or painfulness of something. Potential mitigation strategies are the things that
humans can do to slow down global warming and be more environmentally aware. Climate
change mitigation, in order to be successful, will need work from every nation developing or not
and will take a lot of effort from people all over the world.
One key way to solving the mitigation issue will be in the education of people and change
their perceptions as compared to reality. Lack of public knowledge about climate change
attributed to a lack of understanding and educating the public about climate change is very
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important to stop the effects humans have on warming
. Although we do not know every

effect of climate change and what will happen in the future, uncertainties about global climate
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change should not stop discussions from being made and actions being done to stop it
.

Impact uncertainties can be reduced by improving temperature in CO2 relationships and less
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uncertainty may affect how we prepare in the future for warming
. We should educate

people about climate change and show them effects of the change and how they can lower their
carbon footprint and contribute less by little things they can do everyday.
Maintaining the Earth's natural groundwater is also very important to reducing human
impact on climate change. Groundwater, which we are running out, of is essential to adapting to
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climate change
. The poor and needy will need this water in order to survive extremes in

weather which are increasing due to climate change. We are slowly depleting the amount of
water there is in aquifers and those are essential during droughts and other extremes. We need to
conserve our water.
Terrestrial biosphere is a key component of the global carbon cycle and its carbon
balance is strongly influenced by climate. Continuing environmental changes are thought to
increase global terrestrial carbon uptake. We need to reduce our uptake in order to lower our
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carbon emissions
. Extremes also decrease regional ecosystem carbon stocks and therefore

we can change expected increase is due to the amount of extreme expected. We want to stop the
effects on the carbon cycle by mitigation strategies and burn less fossil fuels.
All peoples in developing and developed countries must work together. We need to
educate, reduce the amount of fossil fuels that we burn, and to reduce our uptake of groundwater.
We need to realize the effects of climate change and therefore do more research to educate more
people on it. If we all take realistic steps to reduce the pace in which our climate is changing than
we can truly make a difference.

Work Cited
1 Clayton, Susan. Wright, Devine. Stern, Paul. Whitmarsh, Lorraine. Carrico,

Amanda. Stegg, Linda. Swim, Linda. Bonnes, Mirilin. Psychological research and global climate
change. Nature. 2015. March 24; 5:640-646
2 Hanten, James. Sato, Makiko. Rvedy, Reto. Perception of climate change. PNAS.

2012. March 29; 109 (37)

3 Kelley, Collin. Mohtad, Shahrzad. Cane, Mark. Seager, Richard. Kushnir,

Yochanan. Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought.
PNAS. 2015. January 30; 112 (11): 3241-3246
4 Karl, Thomas. Arguez, Anthony. Huang, Boqin. Lawrimore, Jay. McMahon,

James. Menne, Matthews. Peterson, Thomas. Vose, Russell. Zhang, Huai. Possible artifacts of
data biases in the recent global warming math. Science. 2015. June 26; 348 (6242):1469-1472
5 Bellar, Celine. Bertelsmeiler, Cleo. Leadley, Paul. Thriller, Wilfried. Courchamp,

Frank. Impacts of climate change on the future of biodiversity. Ecology Letters. 2012. January
18; 15 (4):365-377
6 Poloczanska, Elvira. Brown, Christopher. Sydeman, William. Kiessling, Wolfgang.

Scheoman, David. Moore, Pippa. Brancear, Keith. Bruno, John. Global imprint of climate
change on marine life. Nature Climate Change. 2013. June 24; 3:919-925
7 Knutti, Reto. Sedicek, Jan. Robustness and uncertainties in the new CMIPS climate

model projections. Nature Climate Change. 2012. October 28; 3:369-373

8 Asseng, S. Ewert, F. Rosenzweig, J. Jones, W. Hatfield, C. Ruane, A. Boote, K.

Uncertainty in simulating wheat yields under climate change. Nature Climate Change.2013. May
02; 3:827-832

9 Taylor, Richard. Scanlon, Bridget. Doll, Petra. Beek, Rene, Wanda, Yoshihide.

Groundwater and climate change. Nature Climate Change. 2012. November 25; 3:322-329
10 Alanewinkel, Marc. Cillman, Dominik. Schelhaas, Mart-Jan. Zimmerman,

Nikilaus. Nature Climate Change. 2012. September 23; 3:203-207