From one day to the next, weather can have a big effect on your life. When it rains, you have to stay indoors or carry an umbrella. When it’s cold, you have to bundle up.

Over the course of hundreds, thousands, and millions of years, weather trends affect life on Earth in more dramatic ways. Ice ages or long droughts, for example, can wipe out certain types of plants and animals. Although many species manage to survive such extreme, long-term climate shifts, their living conditions also change.

There’s lots of evidence of drastic changes in climate occurring in the distant past. Earth today may again be in the midst of such a climate change. In the last 100 years, studies show, global temperatures have risen an average of 0.6 degrees C.

That might not sound so bad. After all, what difference does half a degree make?

A growing number of studies suggest, however, that such an increase could have a big impact on life.

Biologists and ecologists are discovering, often by accident, that climate change is forcing some plants and animals into new habitats. Others are becoming extinct. Sometimes, scientists show up at a site they’ve studied for years, only to discover that the organisms they’ve been tracking are no longer there. What’s more, it now looks like this redistribution of life on Earth is sometimes happening at an alarmingly fast pace.

 

By: Analiza S. Manalansan | MT-I | J.C. Payumo Memorial High School | Dinalupihan, Bataan