Climate change means water change, and the impacts
of climate change cause not only global sea levels to rise, but also elicit
dangerous levels of coastal and mainland flooding. This study relates the
effects of climate-change-induced sea level risings to several harmful, and
sometimes preventable, factors causing floods. One topic discussed here will be
the ocean’s current (more specifically, “The Atlantic Meridional Overturning
Current”) as it continues to warm with increasing temperatures. In addition to
discussing the effects of the AMOC, it also relates the increasing causes that
are contributing to flooding, plus the proliferation of melt from ice sheets,
ice caps, and glaciers, which inevitably contributes to the devastating effects
of flooding on coastal communities, destroying habitats and contributing to the
extinction of both aquatic and land animals, and even impacting human
infrastructure and livelihoods. This examination additionally presents the
serious implications that climate change and flooding have had on the planet’s
freshwater resources and reserves, which are being further destroyed by the
added influx of salt water, causing water to then be treated with aquifers, an
energy-intensive and highly expensive process. Lastly, this paper provides
several suggested possibilities for curbing some of the harmful effects humans
have already had on contributing to climate change, as well as the
environmental factors that have further caused dangerous levels of flooding.
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