MIAMI - Most life on Earth is already being changed by the warming climate, even though the rise in global temperature since pre-industrial times has been rather slight, researchers warned on Thursday. These changes will affect humans by causing disease outbreaks, inconsistent crop yields and cutting down on fishery productivity, threatening food security, experts said. The study, which analyzed 94 ecological processes as documented in peer-reviewed literature, also warned that the more ecosystems change, the less likely they may be to guard against the harshest effects of climate change. Increasingly warm oceans will no longer act as a an effective buffer against temperature rise, and climate-related floods, sea-level rise and cyclones will get worse. "We are simply astonished at the level of change we observed, which many of us in the scientific community were not expecting for decades," said senior author James Watson from the University of Queensland and Wildlife Conservation Society, member of the IUCN Climate Change Specialist Group.

Source: Bangkok Post November 11, 2016 08:45 UTC