What are the impacts of climate change and how do mitigation and adaptation differ?
Analyse the impacts of climate change and evaluate mitigation and adaptation responses
A focused answer to the WACE Year 12 Earth and Environmental Science dot point on climate change impacts and responses. Covers impacts across the four spheres, the distinction between mitigation and adaptation, key strategies, and evaluation, with WA examples such as a drying southwest and coral bleaching.
Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed
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What this dot point is asking
SCSA wants you to analyse climate change impacts across Earth systems and evaluate mitigation and adaptation. The key conceptual distinction is between attacking the cause (mitigation) and coping with the consequences (adaptation), and a strong answer argues that both are required.
Impacts across the spheres
Climate change ripples through all four Earth systems.
- Atmosphere: rising average temperatures, more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts and extreme rainfall, and shifting climate zones.
- Hydrosphere: warming and acidifying oceans (as they absorb carbon dioxide), changing ocean currents, and altered rainfall and water availability.
- Cryosphere and sea level: melting glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion of seawater raise sea level, threatening coasts.
- Biosphere: species shift their ranges, ecosystems are disrupted, and stresses such as coral bleaching increase.
Western Australia shows several of these: the southwest has experienced a long-term drying trend reducing rainfall and streamflow, and warm-water events have caused coral bleaching and marine ecosystem damage along the coast.
Mitigation: reducing the cause
Mitigation reduces greenhouse gas concentrations.
- Cutting emissions: shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, and reducing emissions from agriculture and industry.
- Enhancing sinks: protecting and restoring forests and other vegetation that absorb carbon dioxide, and developing carbon capture and storage.
- Policy tools: carbon pricing, targets and international agreements coordinate action across countries.
Mitigation tackles the root cause, but its benefits are global and take time, and it requires broad cooperation.
Adaptation: coping with the consequences
Adaptation reduces the harm from changes we cannot prevent.
- Water security: diversifying supply through desalination and recycling, as Perth has done as rainfall declined.
- Coastal protection: sea walls, managed retreat and planning that accounts for rising seas.
- Agriculture and ecosystems: drought-tolerant crops, changed practices, and protecting refuges for vulnerable species.
- Heat and disaster preparedness: planning for heatwaves and more extreme events.
Adaptation protects communities now, but it treats symptoms rather than the cause and has limits if warming becomes severe.
Evaluating the responses
A balanced evaluation concludes that mitigation and adaptation are complementary, not alternatives. Without mitigation, the changes adaptation must cope with grow ever larger and eventually exceed our ability to adapt. Without adaptation, communities suffer from the warming already locked in by past emissions. Effective responses therefore combine ambitious mitigation to limit future change with adaptation to manage the change already underway.