Earlier this week I was monitoring a Florida-based meteorologist and heard him declare, “…this is the hottest July in recorded memory”. It would be hard to disagree with him.

Each year wildfires burn about 2 million acres of land in Canada. Already this year, 27 million acres have been burnt. All this while drought has affected 76 per cent of that country’s farmland. The smoke from the fires sometimes makes visibility over hundreds of square miles in neighbouring United States virtually impossible.

In the United States, millions of citizens are affected by storms, flooding, wildfires, and droughts at the same time. Across the pond, in southern Europe, tourists are scampering back to the airport — some on foot — to avoid the heat and return home. At the time of writing, 19,000 tourists were leaving Greece and Italy is suffering badly.

Last week I was in Portland — the parish known for daily showers. I was shocked to learn that the river that feeds Somerset Falls has dried up. Several rivers, in fact. On my way back I noticed that the river running past Castleton Gardens is now just a trickle. In Stony Hill, the long, heavy showers are no more. But poincianas and poui trees bloom heavier and last longer. Jamaica Zoo in St Elizabeth is making special water arrangements to preserve its animals. Chicken farmers are losing hundreds of chickens daily as a result of the heat.

This is climate change. Some call it global warming, others describe it as a global climate crisis. All these terms refer to the same thing. The fact is that the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere is rising because of continued emissions of greenhouse gasses. They let sunlight pass through the atmosphere, but they prevent the heat that the sunlight brings from leaving the atmosphere. The main greenhouse gases are water vapour and carbon dioxide.

Some effects of greenhouse gases are the flooding of coastal cities, the desertification of fertile areas, the melting of glacial masses, the proliferation of devastating hurricanes, warmer and more acidic oceans, fish migration, animal extinction, biodiversity loss, water shortages, and displaced communities. Over 97 per cent of scientists agree that humans cause climate change.

The rate of carbon emissions are the highest they have been in 66 million years and the amount of warming in the coming decades is expected to be 250 times greater than the average warming during the past century.

Years ago, when I first heard of climate change, I did not take it seriously. But we all should. The main threats resulting from climate change, which stems from the rising temperature of Earth’s atmosphere, include rising sea levels, ecosystem collapse, and severe weather. Rising temperatures from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions affect planet-wide systems in various ways. For example, it warms the polar regions and the oceans. This melts the ice cover at the poles and causes the sea level to rise. Climate change affects ocean habitats by lowering oxygen and decreasing phytoplankton, which are the small plants that serve as the base of marine food chains. The process also kills coral reefs.

The warming of the atmosphere also changes weather patterns, causing more severe storms and droughts across many global regions. Higher temperatures are affecting the length of seasons and in some places are already crossing safe levels for ecosystems and humans.

In Jamaica, pig farmers now spend much of their days hosing down their pigs as pigs have no sweat glands and will die quickly in this heat. Chickens are dying in large numbers. These conditions cause stress directly and indirectly to animals across the world. Many species are approaching or have reached the limit of where they can go to find hospitable climates. The real problem is how climate affects the ecosystem and food chain that animal has adapted to. In the US and Canada, moose are struggling due to an increase in ticks and parasites that are surviving the shorter, milder winters.

Salmon rely on cold, steady flowing rivers to spawn. As climate changes the temperature and flow of waterways, salmon populations have begun to dwindle, which affects many species that rely on salmon, like orcas and grizzly bears.

There are some natural places with enough diversity in altitude and geology such that, as the planet warms, they can be resilient strongholds for plant and animal species. These strongholds serve as breeding grounds and seed banks for many plants and animals that otherwise may be unable to find habitat due to climate change. But strongholds may not be an option for all species as some plants and animals are blocked from reaching strongholds by human development, like cities, highways, and farmland.

From straining agricultural systems to making regions less habitable, climate change is affecting people everywhere. We may be able to observe how weather patterns near us are shifting. In Alaska, entire coastal communities are being moved because the sea level has risen to the point at which their original location is no longer habitable.

Climate change also exacerbates the threat of human conflict resulting from a scarcity of resources, like food and water, that have become less reliable as growing seasons change and seasons become less predictable. Around the globe, many of the poorest nations are being impacted first and most severely by climate change, even though they have contributed far less to the increase in carbon emissions that has caused the warming in the first place.

Warming ocean temperatures are melting polar ice and shifting ocean currents and fish migration, leading to coral bleaching and die-offs. Because of the ocean’s role in regulating Earth’s climate by absorbing greenhouse gas emissions, they are taking a direct hit from climate change. All of this extra absorbed carbon dioxide is altering the chemistry of our oceans, making them more acidic. Ocean acidification is now the highest it has been in 300 million years.

The disrupted weather patterns, which have led to more droughts and floods, also result in rising populations of insect pests that eat a higher share of crop yields.

It cannot be ignored that agricultural lands are among the Earth’s largest natural reservoirs of carbon, and when farmers use soil health practices, like cover crops, reduced tillage, and crop rotation, they can draw even more carbon out of the atmosphere.

In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we must reduce carbon emissions to the point at which we hold global warming to no more than 1.5°C. To do that we must, as a planet, commit ourselves to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. This will be very difficult and will require a range of solutions applied together. We will need to transition all sectors of our economy away from fossil fuels that emit carbons, increase our use of clean energy sources, like wind and solar, harness the power of nature to capture carbon, and deploy technologies that capture and store carbon.

Scientists claim that proper land management of forests and farmlands, also called natural climate solutions, can provide up to one-third of the emissions necessary to reach the Paris Climate Agreement goal.

Glenn Tucker is an educator and a sociologist. He is also a former president of the Mico Historical Society. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or glenntucker2011@gmail.com.