Researchers are reporting in the journal Science that climate change is happening faster than what was forecast. What we thought would take 20,000 is going to happen in 100 years if we don’t take serious action.
Past and future global transformation of terrestrial ecosystems under climate change
by Connor Nolan1, Jonathan T. Overpeck2,1, Judy R. M. Allen3, Patricia M. Anderson4, Julio L. Betancourt5, Heather A. Binney
Future predictions from paleoecology
Terrestrial ecosystems will be transformed by current anthropogenic change, but the extent of this change remains a challenge to predict. Nolan et al. looked at documented vegetational and climatic changes at almost 600 sites worldwide since the last glacial maximum 21,000 years ago. From this, they determined vegetation responses to temperature changes of 4° to 7°C. They went on to estimate the extent of ecosystem changes under current similar (albeit more rapid) scenarios of warming. Without substantial mitigation efforts, terrestrial ecosystems are at risk of major transformation in composition and structure.
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If a coastal neighborhood will have to be abandoned anyway, is it worth spending money on new sewers?
“People will hang on with their fingernails to keep what they’ve got,” Stoddard says. “But who’s going to move here? And that’s what’s going to kill us.”
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Read the whole thing.
sidd
Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
Miami-Dade is built on the Biscayne Aquifer, 4,000 square miles of unusually shallow and porous limestone whose tiny air pockets are filled with rainwater and rivers running from the swamp to the ocean. The aquifer and the infrastructure that draws from it, cleans its water, and keeps it from overrunning the city combine to form a giant but fragile machine. Without this abundant source of fresh water, made cheap by its proximity to the surface, this hot, remote city could become uninhabitable.
The risk of floods increasing do to human induced climate change is affecting real estate values. Though the risk is increasing in all flood zones, coastal areas are already feeling the pain. Most homeowner’s don’t know about flood insurance until they need it. Then, it is too late.
Bloomberg News reports:
Recent research confirms that the climate threat is already showing up in prices. Economists Asaf Bernstein, Matthew Gustafson and Ryan Lewis have a recent paper showing that houses exposed to sea-level rise of between 0 and 6 feet have been selling at a 7 percent discount relative to houses a similar distance from the beach that aren’t exposed. The time period they look at is 2007-2016 — before the damage from Harvey. They also confirm that the discount is higher in locations where people report more worry about climate change.
Another recent study, by environmental researchers Jesse Keenan Thomas Hill and Anurag Gumber, shows something similar. Focusing on Miami-Dade County, they show that higher-elevation locations have risen in price faster than similar locations at low elevations. That’s consistent with the theory that wealthy buyers pay a premium to escape flooding risk.
i have been reading of the floods in kerala (india, southwest)
and i just realized it isn’t just sea level rise and storm surge
these shorefalling rainstorms
a) pick up huge amounts of water off the ocean
b) drop it inland as they come ashore
c) all that water has to get out thru existing waterways
d) which is difficult, the same system has dumped a lot closer to shore already
e) and, of course added to stormsurge and sea level rise
the floods will come from both directions, the land and the ocean.
It is difficult to say which is worse, for the floods coming in from the land
will carry debris, and worse, poisons from pollution.
move far inland. The ocean, as i have said b4 is very large and wants in your basement.
But i didnt see clearly until now that watching oceanward is not enuf,
it can go over our heads thru the clouds and come in behind us.
Shoulda figured that out after Sandy.
I’m slo, but i get there.
sidd
LIVE
Kerala floods live
updates: Over 10
lakh in relief
camps; Centre declares disaster ‘calamity of severe nature’
Times of India
17 mins ago
LIVE
Kerala floods LIVE:
Devastation to cost
the state Rs 20000
cr, 40000 crore hectares of crops destroyed, says CM
Moneycontrol
52 mins ago
Bodies Found As
Water Recedes In
Kerala, Hundreds
Still Stuck: 10 Points
The U.N. has released a report entitled, “Extreme Weather Continues in 2018 – a Continuing Call to Climate Action”.
Addressing the dangers associated with extreme weather conditions, the Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Change Patricia Espinosa said: “We must keep an eye on the future. As the superstorms and monsoon flooding of last year and the extreme heat and extreme cold of this year show – we still have a long way to go to deliver on the promise of the Paris Climate Change Agreement”.
This year, record warmth was observed across parts of North America, Europe and Asia, as well as the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Record cold May temperatures were limited to northeastern Canada and the northern Atlantic Ocean, off the southern coast of Greenland.
The study published in the journal Nature showed that ice losses from Antarctica are causing sea levels to rise faster today than at any time in the past 25 years. Results of the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise (IMBIE).
According to NASA, “Antarctica’s potential contribution to global sea level rise from its land-held ice is almost 7.5 times greater than all other sources of land-held ice in the world combined. The continent stores enough frozen water to raise global sea levels by 190 feet (58 meters), if it were to melt entirely. Knowing how much ice it’s losing is key to understanding the impacts of climate change now and its pace in the future.”
NOAA points to climate change as part of the problem causing the largest wildfires in California.
Daytime high temperatures were well above average across much of the western United States in July, but it was overnight low temperatures that were really extreme in large areas of California—where firefighters are battling multiple wildfires—and the Great Basin, and in isolated pockets of Colorado and the Southwest.
As the NCEI’s Deke Arndt has blogged about before, nighttime low temperatures are increasing faster than daytime high temperatures across most of the contiguous United States. For much of the West and Southwest, July’s record-breaking nighttime heat is a new highpoint in a long-term trend—one that has rapidly accelerated in recent decades. In California, average overnight low temperature in July rose by 0.3°F per decade over the historical record (1895-2018), but since 2000, the pace of warming has accelerated to 1.3°F per decade.
Average July minimum temperatures (overnight lows) in California (light orange line) from 1895–2018. The trend over the historical record is shown in dark orange, and the recent trend (2000-2018) is shown in red. The twentieth-century average is shown with a gray line. NOAA Climate.gov graph, based on data from NCEI’s Climate at a Glance.
According to Tim Brown, director of NOAA’s Western Region Climate Center (WRCC), it’s a pattern that has serious consequences for wildfires and those who combat them. When temperatures cool off overnight, it’s not just a physical relief for firefighters who may be working in conditions that push the limits of human endurance; fire behavior itself relaxes as temperatures drop, winds grow calmer, and relative humidity rises. He explained via email,
Moisture in dead vegetation continuously tries to reach equilibrium with atmospheric moisture. So if nighttime temperature is staying warmer, then the humidity is lower, and the fuels stay drier. A dead fuel moisture reduction of a few percent can increase flammability, flame length, and subsequent overall fire behavior.
When fires remain active at night, it can increase both the time to containment and total burned area, while also affecting public health and safety through more smoke production and lower air quality. Brown says that qualitatively, there seems to be an increase in firefighters’ reports of active nighttime fire behavior since around 2000. He and other researchers are currently investigating whether that relationship can be confirmed quantitatively.
NASA Aqua satellite image of the Ranch and River Fires in Northern California on August 6, 2018, with a pall of smoke spreading to the east. These fires are part of the Mendocino Complex Fire, which has become the largest fire in California history. Extreme fire activity in the state was exacerbated by record-warm overnight low temperatures in July. Image from NASA Worldview website.
Nighttime warming has consequences for other aspects of public health. WRCC climatologist Nina Oakley pointed out via email that the South Coast region of California is experiencing the largest warming trends in nighttime temperatures, according to an environmental health hazard report from the California Environmental Protection Agency. In many communities in the region, air conditioning—rarely needed in the past—is uncommon. In addition, since 2000, heat waves in California have become more humid. In the report, experts offered a warning about the change:
People, animals, and plants that are adapted to California’s traditionally dry daytime heat and nighttime cooling are unable to recover from extreme heat, especially when humidity is high at night. The increase in nighttime heat waves presents an additional risk factor for vulnerable populations.
The rapid increase in the rate of warming in California and other parts of the U.S. West since the start of the new century is a sharp reminder that we can’t necessarily count on the future changing as slowly as the past. Asked about the July nighttime heat in California, California state climatologist Mike Anderson answered via email, “As for the past decade or two, we have noticed observations have looked different than the rest of the historical record. We are consistently sampling at the warm edge of the historical distribution now, and expectations are for that to continue, with new records being set with increasing frequency in the coming years.”
Parts of Pennsylvania recorded record rainfall during the summer of 2018 with frequent “tropical downpours” delivering thirteen or more inches of rain in a 5 day period. The Penn Environment Organization released a report entitled, “Hitting Close to Home | Global Warming is Fueling Extreme Weather Across the U.S.”
Weather-related disasters affect millions
Since September 2010, counties housing 84 percent of the total Pennsylvania population (over 10 million residents) were affected by federally-declared weather disasters.
Pennsylvania experienced five weather-related disasters, including severe storms, tornadoes, floods, and tropical storms since September 2010.
Extreme weather causes widespread destruction
In February 2015 a large winter storm and associated cold wave impacted many central, eastern and northeastern states, including Pennsylvania. The storm and cold wave caused at least 30 deaths and the total estimated costs were over $1 billion in the affected region.
In October 2012 Hurricane Sandy caused extensive damage to several states, including Pennsylvania from wind, rain, and heavy snow. Hurricane Sandy caused at least 159 deaths and the total estimated costs were $67.6 billion in the affected regions.
Since 2010, extreme weather events have caused at least 30 power outages in Pennsylvania, including one outage that lasted 10 days in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy. [3]
Weather extremes are becoming more common
Globally, 2015 was Earth’s hottest year on record, surpassing 2014. [4] Many types of extreme weather are expected to become more frequent or severe in a warming world, which could lead to more weather-related disasters.
Tropical Storms and Hurricanes: Global warming has the potential to make tropical storms more destructive. Hurricanes and other coastal storms are likely to be more powerful [5] and rainier, [6] while storm surges could be more destructive as sea levels rise. [7]
Heavy Rain and Snow: Extreme precipitation is already increasing; continued trends could increase the risk of intense downpours, heavy snowstorms and severe flooding. [8]
Droughts and Wildfires: While global warming is anticipated to bring more rain to some areas, it will also likely elevate temperatures and extend dry spells. The potential for stronger drought—and greater area burned by wildfires—will increase, particularly in the West and Southwest.
Every year the World Economic Forum publishes the Global Risks Report. This year’s report suggests that experts anticipate another year of heightened risk. From the approximately 1000 respondents of the annual Global Risks Perception Survey, 59% expect an intensified risk, compared to 7% pointing to declining risks.
Environmental risks have grown in prominence over the 13-year history of the Global Risks Report. This trend continues in the 2018 report. All five risks in the environmental category are ranked higher than average in both likelihood and impact over a 10-year horizon.
“Extreme weather events” and “Natural disasters” rank among the top three risks in terms of likelihood and impact. “Failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation” ranks among the top five.
“FEMA confirmed to the Miami Herald that it is looking into switching to risk-based pricing in 2020, which would end the subsidies most coastal communities enjoy on their flood insurance premiums and show the true dollar cost of living in areas repeatedly pounded by hurricanes and drenched with floods — like South Florida.
“That means insurance is about to become very expensive, and it kind of sounds the bell that these are high-risk areas,” said Wayne Pathman, a Miami-based land use attorney and chair of the city’s Sea Level Rise Committee.
Premiums through the National Flood Insurance Policy are already rising an average of eight percent this year; the first wave of pricier policies started in April. That brings the average annual price (including surcharges) for a policy holder to $1,062.
It’s all part of a strategy to make the NFIP financially stable. The program is $20 billion in debt (and that’s after the government forgave $16 billion of that debt last year) because it pays out much more each year than it takes in.”
“Thousands of miles of buried fiber optic cable in densely populated coastal regions of the United States may soon be inundated by rising seas….”
“Most of the damage that’s going to be done in the next 100 years will be done sooner than later,” says Barford, an authority on the “physical internet” — the buried fiber optic cables, data centers, traffic exchanges and termination points that are the nerve centers, arteries and hubs of the vast global information network. “That surprised us. The expectation was that we’d have 50 years to plan for it. We don’t have 50 years.”
Many of the conduits at risk are already close to sea level and only a slight rise in ocean levels due to melting polar ice and thermal expansion as climate warms will be needed to expose buried fiber optic cables to sea water. Hints of the problems to come, says Barford, can be seen in the catastrophic storm surges and flooding that accompanied hurricanes Sandy and Katrina.
“On a finite planet, endless economic growth is impossible.”
1) The US is built on a “capitalist growth economy”
2) A capitalistic growth economy is dependent on population growth
3) Inbreeding of ignorant racists is not a growth economy strategy (such as Germany did through World War II)
4) Immigration (such as Germany is doing now) is the answer
The United States should learn from Germany’s lessons.
In a report published by NOAA, the 2017 nation‐wide average annual frequency of high tide flooding hit an all‐time record.
If high tide flooding in 2018 follows historical patterns, flooding will be most common during the winter (Dec‐Feb) along the West Coast and the northern section of Northeast Atlantic Coast in response to winter storms and more‐predictable monthly highest astronomical tides (predicted tides). Along the Gulf and along much of the Atlantic Coasts, flood patterns are less predictable and occur usually in response to weather effects.
Flooding is, however, most common during the fall (Sep‐Nov) when the mean sea level cycle peaks, and more often during monthly highest predicted tides in some Southeast Atlantic locations. Breaking of annual flood records is to be expected next year and for decades to come as sea levels rise, and likely at an accelerated rate (Sweet et al., 2017b).
When high tide flood frequencies along the entire U.S. coastline are averaged (Figure 3b), the 2017 national average of 6 days . . . is record breaking. Rising ocean levels along the U.S. coastline (Figure 3b, blue line) of about 2 mm/year since 1920 are driving (along with local land subsidence) a rapid increase in U.S. high tide flood frequencies. The U.S. average high tide flood frequency is now 50% greater since 2000 and 100% greater than it was 30 years ago.
As the NCEI’s Deke Arndt has 
