How Climate Change Will Impact Kansas City

By: Charles Doering-Powell, Pembroke Hill Sr. and Blog Editor

Climate change affects all areas of the world in numerous ways - the effects span far and wide. Learning about how such a drastic change affects our city is incredibly important - education on the subject and how our individual and at large lives are to be changed is a crucial part of functioning as a community. 

One of the biggest problems that Kansas City will be affected by due to climate change is a drastic temperature increase. While the start of the century hasn’t seen much change, the coming years will see an increase of 4 degrees fahrenheit by the year 2060. This means that heat waves will be more frequent and hotter than ever and both summer and winter days will be warmer. The increase in temperature will also cause glaciers in the arctic regions of the globe to melt (more than they already are) and, in turn, sea levels will rise. A rise in sea level will affect coastal communities, including the people, plants, and animals living near the ocean, potentially uprooting such communities and forcing them to move further inland. 

Climate change will also afflict the Kansas City area with numerous issues regarding water. First, climate change could mean Kansas City and other communities all around the world could see between 1 and 10 percent higher quantities of rain and snow. While it may not seem like more than a couple free car washes, more rain could mean a complete change in the ecosystems that are present in KC. The flora and fauna that we see all over Kansas City would be forced to adapt to a much wetter climate than we have currently, which is problematic in so many ways. On top of the changing ecosystem, an increase in rain will lead to worse, more frequent flooding, which yields a higher risk for the KC population regarding damage of property.

Overall, the risks associated with climate change as affects Kansas City are astronomical, and while it may not seem that our carbon emissions are having a huge effect our world today, generations to come are in serious trouble if we don’t act now to combat global warming.