Chapters 13.1 (what the data shows) and 13.2 (why it's happening) lead directly here: the impacts. Climate change is not one problem but a cascade of them, and geographers sort them into two linked groups — effects on the environment (reefs, oceans, ice, weather) and effects on people (health, food, water, livelihoods). This lesson works through both, anchored by two contrasting case studies — the Great Barrier Reef and the global ski industry — so you can write with specific, real-world detail rather than generalities.
By the end you can:
Impacts divide into environmental and human — but the two are tightly coupled, and the strongest answers show that coupling. A bleached reef (environmental) guts the tourism jobs that depend on it (human); heat and drought stressing crops (environmental) drive hunger and price spikes (human). Keep the categories separate when you list impacts, but link them when you explain.
Acidification, coral bleaching, worse storms/floods/fire, rising seas.
Health, falling crop yields, damaged industries, displacement.
Separate from warming, but from the same cause: the ocean has absorbed roughly a quarter of all human CO₂ emissions, and that dissolved gas forms carbonic acid. Surface seawater is now about 30% more acidic than in pre-industrial times — a fall of about 0.1 pH units. Lower pH makes it harder for corals, shellfish and plankton to build their calcium-carbonate shells and skeletons, threatening the base of marine food webs. The IPCC rates this as a major, worsening impact.
An unprecedented drought and Australia's hottest, driest year on record (2019) primed the landscape, and the 2019–20 “Black Summer” bushfires became among the worst ever: roughly 24 million hectares burnt, 33 people killed directly, hundreds more deaths linked to smoke, and an estimated 3 billion animals killed or displaced. Climate change didn't start the fires, but it amplified the natural hazard — hotter, drier, more dangerous fire weather (full detail in Chapter 14).
The human toll runs across four fronts — and it lands unevenly. The IPCC finds that the people and places that did least to cause climate change are often hit hardest by it, a gap it calls a matter of climate justice.
Heat illness, disease spread, smoke.
Lower yields; food insecurity.
Scarcity & drought.
Damaged industries; displacement.
Why do the poorest communities often suffer most, though they emit least?
Coral lives in symbiosis with tiny algae (zooxanthellae) that give it both colour and food. When water stays too warm for too long, the coral expels the algae, turns bone-white — bleaches — and starves if the heat persists. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered repeated mass bleaching events — 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2024 — monitored by AIMS. 2024 formed part of the fourth-ever global bleaching event.
Mountain regions warm faster than the global average — the European Alps have warmed about 2°C since the late 1800s, roughly double the global figure. Less snow, and less reliable snow, means shorter seasons, fewer visitors and lost revenue across resorts in the USA and Europe. The industry adapts — artificial snowmaking, moving lifts to higher altitudes, and pivoting to year-round mountain tourism — but each fix carries real costs (snowmaking is water- and energy-hungry) and hard limits: you cannot make snow in warm air.
This ABC News report covers scientists' warnings of catastrophic mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. It puts footage and faces to the process in the diagram — heat stress, the loss of colour, and what repeated bleaching means for a reef that supports thousands of species and a multi-billion-dollar tourism industry.
▶▶ Watch: Scientists warn of catastrophic coral bleaching on Great Barrier Reef | ABC News — ABC News (Australia) (click → opens on YouTube)As you watch, note: (1) what sea-temperature trigger the scientists point to; (2) how they describe the scale of the bleaching; (3) one human consequence (tourism, jobs) they raise.
Every claim about the reef and the climate here traces back to a primary source — a monitoring agency, a management authority or an assessment report. Use them to check the data and to build your case study. Naming and citing a source is exactly what lifts a Band 5–6 response above a Band 3–4 one.