The significant and various impacts of climate change are observed from the past experience, the impacts were shown as advantageous and adverse impacts in different sectors and regions, while mainly presented as adverse. It is very likely that future climate change would result in significant adverse impacts on the ecosystem and the national sectors such as agriculture, water resources, and coastal zones in China. The adverse impacts would be alleviated by adopting adaptive measures; the adaptive actions to climate change should be incorporated into the medium- and long-term planning of national economic and social development. Because of lack of scientific research and limit of understanding on climate change, there are still a lot of uncertainties for impact assessment methodology and results. Case studies should be strengthened, research aspects should be enlarged, and impacts assessment of extreme weather/climate events should be enhanced to reduce the uncertainties and develop practical adaptive measures to cope with climate change in China.

Under the condition of polar eco-environment, the accumulative profiles of seabird and sea animal excrements and the depositional sequences influenced by animal excrements are good archives to study eco-geology in ice-free regions of Antarctica and Arctic. The historical records of Antarctic penguin and seal population changes, which had been reconstructed from the sediments influenced by animal excrements, showed that historically the penguin and seal population had experienced dramatic fluctuations. The period of sharp decrease in penguin populations corresponded well to Neoglaciation, and it may be not suitable for the survival of Antarctic penguin under the extremely cold or warm climate conditions; the historical change of seal population seemed to be related to climatic variation, sea-ice coverage and its forage behavior. Additionally, the results showed that the Antarctic seal hairs and sediments including seal excrements well preserved the historical information of ancient civilization over the past several thousand years, and the fluctuations of Hg concentration in the seal hairs and the excrement sediments were found to be closely coincided with ancient activities of gold and silver mining