## Lesson: Impacts from Climate Change

This lesson explores the impacts of climate change, focusing on how the phenomenon is assessed and the key climate-sensitive sectors affected.

**Climate Risk Framework:**

* Climate risk is a combination of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability.
* Increasing any of these factors elevates the overall climate risk, as outlined by the IPCC's Climate Risk Framework.

**Regional Impacts:**

* **Polar Regions:** Permafrost thawing, coastal sea ice melting, rising sea levels, increased weather intensity, and faster temperature increases than other regions.
* **Small Islands:** Sea-level rise inundating low-lying areas, changing rainfall patterns, warming and acidification of coastal waters, storms and flooding, land erosion, changes in the global water cycle, saline intrusion, ecosystem degradation, and climate-induced diseases.
* **Oceans:** Rising sea surface temperature and heat content, sea-level rise due to thermal expansion and melting ice, changes in ocean circulation, ocean acidification, changing salinity, and decreasing oxygen concentration.
* **Mountains:** Stronger temperature increases than over the ocean and at high latitudes, shifting snow lines and freezing lines, changing precipitation patterns, and more frequent and intense extreme events.

**Impacts on Humans and Economies:**

* The **Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage** aims to minimize and avert climate change-related losses.
* The **ECLAC methodology** quantifies impacts of climate events on various sectors (social, productive, and infrastructure) by assessing damage to assets and converting it into economic losses.
* **Climate-sensitive sectors:**
    * **Food and Agriculture:** Crop region shifts, impacts on global food supply.
    * **Health:** Waterborne, vector-borne, and airborne diseases.
    * **Energy:** Impacts on energy systems and challenges for transitioning to renewable sources.
    * **Human displacement:** Inundation of low-lying areas forcing people to relocate.
* **Gender, age, and economic well-being** influence the way individuals and communities experience climate change impacts.

**Activity:**

* Examine a map of weather and climate events for 2018 to understand how your region has been affected.

**What You've Learned:**

* The IPCC's climate risk framework highlights the diverse aspects of climate change impacts.
* We need to understand how social, economic, and ecological systems can adapt to these impacts and implement appropriate measures.

**Think about:** What measures would you like to see in your region to address climate change impacts?