Top 10 Effects

Top 10 Worst Effects of Global Warming

1. Rising Sea Level

Earth's hotter temperature doesn't necessarily mean the Miami lifestyle is moving to the Arctic, but it does mean rising sea levels. How are hotter temperatures linked to rising waters? Hotter temperatures mean ice -- glaciers, sea ice and polar ice sheets -- is melting, increasing the amount of water in the world's seas and oceans.

Scientists are able to measure that melt water from Greenland's ice cap directly impacts people in the United States: The flow of the Colorado River has increased sixfold [source: Scientific American]. And scientists project that as the ice shelves on Greenland and Antarctica melt, sea levels could be more than 20 feet (6 meters) higher in 2100 than they are today [source: An Inconvenient Truth]. Such levels would submerge many of Indonesia's tropical islands and flood low-lying areas such as Miami, New York City's Lower Manhattan and Bangladesh.

2. Shrinking Glaciers

You don't need special equipment to see that glaciers around the world are shrinking. Tundra once covered with thick permafrost is melting with rising surface temperatures and is now coated with plant life.

In the span of a century, glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park have deteriorated from 150 to just 35 [source: New York Times]. And the Himalayan glaciers that feed the Ganges River, which supplies drinking and irrigation water to 500 million people, are reportedly shrinking by 40 yards (37 meters) each year [source: The Washington Post].

3. Heat Waves

The deadly heat wave that swept across Europe in 2003, killing an estimated 35,000 people, could be the harbinger of an intense heat trend that scientists began tracking in the early 1900s [source: MSNBC].

Extreme heat waves are happening two to four times more often now, steadily rising over the last 50 to 100 years, and are projected to be 100 times more likely over the next 40 years [source: Global Development and Environment Institute,...