Six Unexpected Side Effects of Global Warming

1. Allergies

You might want to grab your tissues, because rising temperatures are making it a little harder for people with seasonal allergies, like pollen. A 2021 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the allergy season increased by twenty days from 1990 to 2018. To make it even worse, higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere cause plants to produce more pollen.

2. Lightning

Lightning strikes are going to become more frequent because of—-you guessed it—-global warming. Lightning occurs when electrical charges build up within the water vapor of a cloud. Warmer temperatures cause more water vapor to build up in clouds, leading to more lightning. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, predict a twelve percent  increase in lightning strikes for every degree Celsius increase in temperature. 

3. Home Runs

To understand this, you first have to know a little bit of meteorology. Heating causes air molecules to move faster and spread farther apart, whereas cooling brings them closer together. This change in molecular spacing affects the overall density of the air. A recent study published in The Washington Post found that for every one degree Celsius increase in temperature, the probability of a home run increases by a remarkable 1.96 percent.

4. Frog Croaks

In the forests of Puerto Rico, scientists have observed a notable change in the pitch of the croaks of the coquí frog. Increasing temperatures associated with global warming are causing the frogs to shrink, which leads to higher-pitched calls.

5. Bearded Dragons

Extremely hot temperatures are causing Australian Central Bearded Dragons to ignore their male chromosomes and grow a female body. In a study published in Nature magazine, scientists studied bearded dragons that came from regions with particularly high temperatures and found that eleven of them had male chromosomes but no male sex organs. Bearded dragons can change sex, specifically from male to female, due to temperature-dependent sex determination. This means that if their eggs are incubated at higher temperatures, they will develop as females, even if they have the genetic makeup of a male. This could cause significant imbalances in the populations in the future.

6. Airplane Turbulence

I am sorry to tell you, but those long plane flights are going to get a lot more bumpy. Turbulence is caused by colliding air streams, and as our planet heats up, those colliding air streams are becoming more frequent. In a study published by Geophysical Research Letters, scientists found that severe turbulence was fifty-five percent more frequent in 2020 than in 1979. Climate change is likely behind this increase because hotter air means wind speeds and directions are changing more rapidly, the researchers wrote in the study.