Making Sense of Climate Change, Part 2: Warming, sea level rise and extreme weather Bert G Drake Senior Scientist, Emeritus Smithsonian Environmental Research Center drakebsi.edu 410-867-1957 Photo courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Program
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Presentation Transcript
01
Making Sense of Climate Change, Part 2:
Warming, sea level rise and extreme weather Bert G Drake
Senior Scientist, Emeritus
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center drakeb@si.edu 410-867-1957 Photo courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Program<br>
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2016 hottest year on record!!
Temperature in Baghdad at the international airport hit 109 or higher nearly every day since June 19.
Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, all-time high of nearly 126 degrees. Basra 129!
Heat index 140 across Uniteed Arab Emirates.
Washington Post, August 10, 2016 Persian Gulf may be too hot for human survival by 2090.
Washington Post, October 2015<br>
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Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe Image: NASA<br>
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Arctic sea ice surrounded by land Antarctic sea ice surrounded by water Photo: Andreas Weith, Creative Commonshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en<br>
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Albedo: relative “whiteness” Photo: Sam Carana/Arctic-News.Blogspot.comhttp://albedochange.blogspot.com/<br>
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Declining snow cover Credit: Robert Simmon, NASA Earth Observatory
http://www.livescience.com/26091-arctic-snow-cover-decline.html<br>
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Rhone Glacier (Gletch Valley, Switzerland)
shrunk dramatically since 1850 Photograph courtesy of bigfoto.com, inset courtesy Library of Congress<br>
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Boulder Glacier, Montana, Glacier National Park. Why glaciers matter
Drinking water for hundreds of millions of people
Irrigation for crops and water for animals during drought
Electric power from dams on glacier rivers<br>
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Scientific and Technical Working Group Maryland Climate Change Commission<br>
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Profiling risk and sustainability in coastal deltas of the world
Tessler et al. Science 7 August 2015 River deltas where rising sea level threatens communities<br>
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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-reveals-acceleration-of-sea-level-rise-20055Kopp et al. 2016 (PNAS)<br>
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Spanger-Siegfried, E., M.F. Fitzpatrick, and K. Dahl. 2014. Encroaching tides: How sea level rise and tidal flooding threaten U.S. East and Gulf Coast communities over the next 30 years. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists.<br>
Superstorm Sandy, October 2012 Largest hurricane in the
Atlantic…over 1,000
miles wide
Caused $75 billion in
damage
Killed 233 people Credit: NASA<br>
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Adaptive …”measures fall into three categories: defending against the sea, accommodating rising water, and retreating from the immediate shoreline” Spanger-Siegfried, E., M.F. Fitzpatrick, and K. Dahl. 2014. Encroaching tides: How sea level rise and tidal flooding threaten U.S. East and Gulf Coast communities over the next 30 years. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists.<br>