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3 Areas of Concern for Humans from Abrupt Changes
Pages 127-146

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From page 127...
... This chapter synthesizes the previous material into how it relates to food security, water security, ecosystem services, infrastructure, human health, and national security. ECOSYSTEM SERVICES Abrupt climate impacts may have detrimental effects on ecological resources that are critical to human well-being.
From page 128...
... . The MEA divides ecosystem services into four categories: supporting services, provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural services (Reid et al., 2005)
From page 129...
... are two examples of provisioning services. Regulating services include coastal wetlands, like those of Ashe Island, NC (C)
From page 130...
... . Second, extreme events (increased frequency of floods or drought, for instance)
From page 131...
... . Food The spectrum of abrupt disruptions to ecosystem services as a result of climate change is broad, but of particular concern are those that would impact essential provisioning services such as food production and water availability.
From page 132...
... used the PEGASUS process-based crop model and found that global maize production for 2050, under a climate change scenario based on rapid economic growth (A1B; see IPCC, 2007) , changes by –15 percent, and under a scenario based on more modest economic growth (B1)
From page 133...
... (2000) , for example, demonstrated that changes to the current patterns from water consumption and withdrawals already exceed the expected changes to the water cycle anticipated from climate change.
From page 134...
... . Other Provisioning Services Outside the food and water sector, abrupt changes to other provisioning services also are very likely as a result of in-progress climate change (Reid et al., 2005, see Box 3.1)
From page 135...
... ; thus, the loss of biodiversity through climate-caused or climate-exacerbated extinctions is of considerable concern. Among the provisioning services that have been shown to increase with biodiversity are: intraspecific genetic diversity increasing the yield of commercial crops; tree species diversity enhancing production of wood in plantations; plant species diversity in grasslands improving the production of fodder; higher diversity of fish leading to greater stability of fisheries yields; higher plant diversity increasing resistance to invasion by less-desirable exotic species, and in decreasing prevalence of fungal and viral infections (Cardinale et al., 2012)
From page 136...
... Increased frequency of such extreme weather events could erode the ecotourism base on which the local economies depend. Other international examples include ecotourism in the Galapagos Islands -- driven in a large part to view unique, threatened species -- which contributed 68 percent of the 78 percent growth in GDP of the Galapagos that took place from 1999–2005 (Taylor et al., 2008)
From page 137...
... This challenge has illustrated a time scale issue associated with abrupt change. Currently, it will take years to rebuild our fleet of ice-breakers, but because of the rapid loss of sea ice in 2007 and more recently, the need for these ships is now (NRC, 2007; O'Rourke, 2013)
From page 138...
... . Consequently, the United States has a large amount of physical assets located near coasts and currently vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surges exacerbated by rising seas (See Chapter 2 and especially Box 2.1 for additional discussion of this issue.)
From page 139...
... . Arctic Transportation and Infrastructure Some of the most apparent infrastructure impacts are in the Arctic, owing to both the rapidity of summer sea ice loss in the Arctic Ocean and the non-linear rise of air temperatures there relative to the global mean ("Arctic climate amplification")
From page 140...
... . The second way in which milder winters and/or deeper snowfall reduce human access to cold landscapes is through reduced viability of winter roads (also called ice roads, snow roads, seasonal roads, or temporary roads)
From page 141...
... Offshore accessibility increases for Canada and the United States are projected to be less than for the Russian EEZ, owing to greater ice persistence in the Canadian Archipelago and already high accessibility off the North Slope of Alaska today. The timing and magnitude of these projected marine accessibility increases are likely conservative, both because most GCM projections of sea ice loss generally lag behind observations and the CCSM4 model in particular has weaker Arctic climate amplification than previous versions (e.g., ~16 percent less than CCSM3, despite higher global warming; Vavrus et al., 2012)
From page 142...
... will become enabled. Red indicates where conditions presently suitable for building temporary winter roads (assuming 2000 kg weight vehicles)
From page 143...
... Dashed lines indicate national 200-nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) boundaries; white backdrops indicate period-averaged sea ice concentrations (figure adapted from Smith and Stephenson, 2013)
From page 144...
... Related issues of food and water security have been discussed in previous sections. This section briefly describes several other human health-related impacts -- heat waves, vector-borne and zoonotic diseases, and waterborne diseases -- but there are others, including potential impacts from reduced air quality, impacts on human health and development, impacts on mental health and stress-related disorders, and impacts on neurological diseases and disorders (see for example Portier et al., 2010; NRC, 2001; WHO, 2000; WHO/WMO, 2012)
From page 145...
... . Because climate change increases the severity and frequency of some major precipitation events, communities -- especially in the developing world -- could be faced with elevated disease burden from waterborne diseases" (Portier et al., 2010)
From page 146...
... . These impacts from climate change may present national security challenges through humanitarian crises, disruptive migration events, political instability, and interstate or internal conflict.


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