Introduction

This section will show three major effects of global warming - increasing heat, producing gases, and causing flooding - and how each is dangerous.

Heat

Increasing temperatures or heat will obviously be an effect of global warming, but the dangers it presents might not seem so obvious.

One major danger of increasing heat is on human health. Medical research shows that human deaths due to heat exhaustion would probably increase due to increasing heat.

Heat also endangers the health of plants and animals living around us. Rising temperatures will force Earth's most fertile lands toward earth's poles. Animals and plants that have long inhabited them may not be able to keep up. As species try to travel toward the poles, they will encounter highways and other barriers. If they are unable to cross these barriers, they may suffer and die in the warmer and less fertile climate they become stuck in.

Gases

Another effect of global warming is to produce gases.

One dangerous gas produced during global warming is ground-level ozone. Ozone is produced near the ground with the help of heat.

Ground-level ozone is harmful to humans, even in relatively small doses. When a person breathes in ozone, it damages lung tissue. Exposure to ozone can cause nausea and chest pain in healthy people, and ozone can be deadly for people with asthma.

Flooding

A third effect, flooding, poses a serious danger for coastal areas.

Global warming causes glaciers to melt and add water to Earth's oceans. As the sea levels of these oceans rise, the oceans flood coastal lands and fresh water is lost as salty ocean water enters.

A smaller danger of flooding exists for inland areas, where global warming increases both evaporation and precipitation. Scientists are not sure how this increased water activity affects all areas of the inland world, but they believe that some areas will become wetter and others will become drier.

Conclusion

The Dangers Quiz will test what you have learned about these three dangerous effects of global warming. After you're done, you will want to learn how you can help stop these dangers from happening. Go on to the Solutions section to see some things you can do to help.