Earth’s energy budget is out of balance – here’s how it’s warming the climate
Scott Denning
Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University
The Sun over Earth, seen from the International Space Station. NASA, CC BY – NC
You probably remember your grade school science teachers explaining that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. That’s a fundamental property of the universe.
Energy can be transformed, however. When the Sun’s rays reach Earth, they are transformed into random motions of molecules that you feel as heat. At the same time, Earth and the atmosphere are sending radiation back into space. The balance between the incoming and outgoing energy is known as Earth’s “energy budget.”
Our climate is determined by these energy flows. When the amount of energy coming in is more than the energy going out, the planet warms up.
That can happen in a few ways, such as when sea ice that normally reflects solar radiation back into space disappears and the dark ocean absorbs that energy instead. It also happens when greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere and trap some of the energy that otherwise would have radiated away.
99.9 watts are reflected back into space by clouds, dust, snow and the Earth’s surface.
The remaining 240.5 watts are absorbed – about a quarter by the atmosphere and the rest by the surface of the planet. This radiation is transformed into thermal energy within the Earth system. Almost all of this absorbed energy is matched by energy emitted back into space. A tiny residual – 0.6 watts per square meter – accumulates as global warming. That may not sound like much, but it adds up.
Illustration of how energy flows to Earth’s surface and away from it.
The atmosphere absorbs a lot of energy and emits it as radiation both into space and back down to the planet’s surface. In fact, Earth’s surface gets almost twice as much radiation from the atmosphere as it does from direct sunshine. That’s primarily because the Sun heats the surface only during the day, while the warm atmosphere is up there 24/7.
Together, the energy reaching Earth’s surface from the Sun and from the atmosphere is about 504 watts per square meter. Earth’s surface emits about 79% of that back out. The remaining surface energy goes into evaporating water and warming the air, oceans and land.
The tiny residual between incoming sunshine and outgoing infrared is due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the air. These gases are transparent to sunlight but opaque to infrared rays – they absorb and emit a lot of infrared rays back down.
Earth’s surface temperature must increase in response until the balance between incoming and outgoing radiation is restored.
What does this mean for global temperatures?
Doubling of carbon dioxide would add 3.7 watts of heat to every square meter of the Earth. Imagine old-fashioned incandescent night lights spaced every 3 feet over the entire world, left on forever.
At the current rate of emissions, greenhouse gas levels would double from preindustrial levels by the middle of the century.
Climate scientists calculate that adding this much heat to the world would warm Earth’s climate by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 C). Preventing this would require replacing fossil fuel combustion, the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, with other forms of energy.
Earth’s energy budget is at the heart of the upcoming IPCC climate assessment, written by hundreds of scientists reviewing the latest research. With knowledge of what’s changing, everyone can make better choices to preserve the climate as we know it.
Our leaders look climate change in the eyes, and shrug
Hamilton Nolan
Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
If you have cultivated an Edgar Allen Poe-like appreciation for the macabre, there is a certain sort of amusement to be had in watching the developed world deal with the insistent onslaught of climate change. Like many horror stories, this one features a main character full of futile determination to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the ominous signs of doom become ever more impossible to ignore. We can chuckle knowing that the monster is going to come for our designated protectors. We stop chuckling knowing that it’s coming for all of us next.
It is easy to imagine that a real live existential threat to our way of life would prompt any society to assume war footing and marshal everything it has to fight for survival. Unfortunately, this response only takes hold in actual war situations, where the threat is “other people that we can shoot and kill in glorious fashion”. When the threat comes not from enemy people, but from our own nature, we find it much harder to rise to the occasion. Where is the glory in recognizing the folly of our own greed and profligacy? Leaders are not elected on such things. We want leaders who will give us more, leading us ever onwards, upwards and into the grave.
The latest demonstration of this comes from the G20, that coalition that is as good a proxy as any for the combined will of the world’s richest countries. The latest G20 meeting wrapped up last week without firm commitments on phasing out coal power, or on what steps nations will promise to take to try to hold global warming to 1.5C. This goal is both necessary and, perhaps, unlikely – a report by scientists found that China, Russia, Brazil and Australia are all pursuing policies that could lead to a cataclysmic five degrees of warming.
The G20 is a perfect model of our collective failure to build institutions capable of coping with deep, long-term, existential problems that cannot be solved by building more weapons. On the one hand, the head of the United Nations says that there is no way for the world to meet its 1.5C warming goal without the leadership of the G20; on the other hand, a recent analysis found that G20 members have, in the past five years, paid $3.3tn in subsidies for fossil fuel production and consumption. The same group that claims to be bailing out humanity’s sinking ship with one hand is busily setting it aflame with the other hand. It is not good to be too pessimistic on climate change, because we must maintain the belief that we can win this battle if we are to have any hope at all. That said, it sure does seem like we’re screwed.
As overwhelming and omnipresent as the climate crisis is, it is not the core issue. The core issue is capitalism. Capitalism’s unfettered pursuit of economic growth is what caused climate change, and capitalism’s inability to reckon with externalities – the economic term for a cost that falls onto third parties – is what is preventing us from solving climate change. Indeed, climate change itself is the ultimate negative externality: fossil-fuel companies and assorted polluting corporations and their investors get all the benefits, and the rest of the world pays the price. Now the entire globe finds itself trapped in the gruesome logic of capitalism, where it is perfectly rational for the rich to continue doing something that is destroying the earth, as long as the profits they reap will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.
Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left
Congratulations, free market evangelists: this is the system you have built. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to lean too heavily on the touchy-feely, Gaia-esque interpretation of global warming as the inevitable wounds of an omniscient Mother Earth, but you must admit that viewing humanity and its pollution as a malicious virus set to be eradicated by nature is now a fairly compelling metaphor. Homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have somehow gotten ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all these wildfires and floods is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it. The keystone experience of global capitalism is to gape at a drought-fueled fire as it consumes your home, and then go buy a bigger SUV to console yourself.
This year, the G20 is patting itself on the back for “[recognizing] carbon pricing as a potential tool to address climate change for the first time in an official communique”. This would have been encouraging 30 years ago, when we should have established a carbon tax after it became clear that carbon emissions cause tangible damage to the environment. In 2021, this sort of diplomatic marginalia is the equivalent of a child on the Titanic proudly showing his parents his completed homework, just as the ship slips beneath the waves.
Of course we need a price on carbon. Of course we need extremely strict emissions regulations, massive green energy investments, and a maniacal focus on sustainability fierce enough to radically change a society that is built to promote unlimited consumption. But, to be honest, there is little indication that we will get those things any time soon. The path we are on, still, is not one that leads to a happy ending. Rather, it is one that leads to the last billionaire standing on dry land blasting off in his private rocket as the rest of us drown in rising seas.
Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left. We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.
Atlantic Ocean currents weaken, signaling big weather changes – study
Nina Chestney
General view shows the Atlantic ocean near the road between Saint-Jean-De-Luz and Hendaye, in Socoa, France.
LONDON (Reuters) – The Atlantic Ocean’s current system, an engine of the Northern Hemsiphere’s climate, could be weakening to such an extent that it could soon bring big changes to the world’s weather, a scientific study said on Thursday.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a large system of ocean currents which transports warm water from the tropics northwards into the North Atlantic.
As the atmosphere warms due to increased greenhouse gas emissions, the surface ocean beneath retains more of heat. A potential collapse of the system could have severe consequences for the world’s weather systems.
Climate models have shown that the AMOC is at its weakest in more than a 1,000 years. However, it has not been known whether the weakening is due to a change in circulation or it is to do with the loss of stability.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, said the difference is crucial.
“The loss of dynamical stability would imply that the AMOC has approached its critical threshold, beyond which a substantial and in practice likely irreversible transition to the weak mode could occur,” said Niklas Boers at the Potstdam Insitute for Climate Impact Research and author of the study.
By analyzing the sea-surface temperature and salinity patterns of the Atlantic Ocean, the study said the weakening of the last century is likely to be associated with a loss of stability.
“The findings support the assessment that the AMOC decline is not just a fluctuation or a linear response to increasing temperatures but likely means the approaching of a critical threshold beyond which the circulation system could collapse,” Boers said.
If the AMOC collapsed, it would increase cooling of the Northern Hemisphere, sea level rise in the Atlantic, an overall fall in precipitation over Europe and North America and a shift in monsoons in South America and Afria, Britain’s Met Office said.
Other climate models have said the AMOC will weaken over the coming century but that a collapse before 2100 is unlikely.
(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Column One: In drought-plagued northern Mexico, tens of thousands of cows are starving to death
Kate Linthicum
Marco Antonio Gutierrez, a cattle rancher in Buenavista, in Mexico’s Sonora state, stands among the carcasses of livestock who died of starvation. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
In the parched hills of southern Sonora, Marco Antonio Gutierrez paced around a clearing, counting the dead.
There were seven rotting carcasses — jutting ribs and shriveled hides — and two sun-bleached skulls. Nine cows, felled by heat and hunger.
“There’s nothing for them to eat,” said Gutierrez, a wide-brimmed hat shading his downcast eyes. “There used to be big ranches here. Now it’s pure sorrow.”
Two years of extreme drought have turned large stretches of northern Mexico into a boneyard. Between starvation and ranchers forced to prematurely sell or slaughter their livestock, officials say the number of cattle in Sonora has dropped from 1.1 million to about 635,000.
It’s an unimaginable loss for a state that is world-famous for its high-quality cows, and where beef is not just a central part of the diet and economy but also a tradition that binds families together.
This is a place, after all, with a bull on its state flag, and where families gather every Sunday around their charcoal grills. Red meat is considered a birthright: It’s not uncommon for folks here to eat beef three times a day — machaca scrambled with eggs for breakfast, arrachera for lunch and carne asada for dinner.
Rancher Manuel Bustamante Parra with one of his heifers. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Gutierrez, 55, and pretty much everyone he knows was born ranching. By the age of 10, he and his friends had all learned from their fathers how to lasso, brand and even pull a calf from the womb.
Now, as they desperately watch the skies for rain, they wonder if there’s any future in it.
Gutierrez doesn’t use the phrase “climate change” to describe what’s happening, but he laments that every year seems drier and hotter than the last. In recent months, he has watched helplessly as 70 of his 100 cows have starved to death.
Over coffee and machaca at a restaurant owned by fellow rancher Julio Aldama Solis, the two friends mulled whether it was finally time to auction off their remaining cattle — or whether they should keep struggling.
Selling would be heartbreaking, Aldama said, a surrender not only of their cowboy identity but also their family legacy.
“Imagine the sadness — all the sacrifices of your grandparents and your parents for nothing,” said Aldama, the 56-year-old scion of a prosperous ranching family in the largely rural county of Cajeme.
Gutierrez sipped his coffee. There was a reason he had held on to his herd during the worst of the drought, even as the animals wasted away in front of him.
It was his father, long dead, who had taught him the arduous but rewarding ways of ranch life.
Healthy livestock drink water from a trough at Rancho La Ventana on La Noria de Cuco, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
And Gutierrez had come to love his cattle, even giving names to some: Coyota, La Venada, Vellota.
They had lived alongside his own family, and had helped sustain it financially. Every year the cows birthed calves that he could sell for about $600 each at auction.
At least now they were free from the misery of drought.
“They passed on to a better life,” he said.
‘THEY’RE DRY. COMPLETELY’
The cicadas were humming. That was a good sign.
Some people in these parts believe the buzz of cicadas — like the tambourine shake of a rattlesnake — means a thunderstorm is rolling in.
Gutierrez and Aldama scanned the sky. The sun was beating down, hot as ever, but a few cotton-like clouds loomed on the horizon.
“We’re all praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe that it rains,” Aldama said.
A malnourished cow forages for food along the roadside in Buenavista. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
They were touring the region’s ranches with another friend, Ricardo Alcala, who is the president of the Local Livestock Assn. of the Yaqui Valley. All three wore jeans with silver buckles and white cowboy hats.
There had been a couple of big storms in other parts of the state — enough to cause flooding in the border city of Nogales. Yet 97% of municipalities in Sonora remained officially in drought, and while sporadic rain here in the south had greened up the mesquite trees that dotted the landscape, it had not been enough to make grass grow.
A worker loads alfalfa in Cocorit, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
It wasn’t even noon yet, and the thermometer on Alcala’s truck read 104 degrees. As the friends drove, they passed people shielding themselves from the sun with umbrellas, and dogs and horses hugging the sides of buildings, desperate for shade.
And then there were the cattle, thousands of them, some so skinny they looked like skeletons wandering the hills.
For months, ranchers had depended on alfalfa grown in fields irrigated with water from private wells or a nearby dam. But when the dam levels fell dangerously low, authorities had cut off the supply to ranches and farms to conserve water for drinking, cooking and bathing. The price of alfalfa had doubled — putting it out of reach for many.
Alcala’s organization had pleaded with authorities to drill wells in the region so ranchers could grow their own food for their cattle. But water table levels have fallen too, making it clearer each day that wells are at best a temporary solution.
A fisherman tosses a net at Agua Caliente reservoir in Cajeme, Sonora. The drought has lowered the water level to below normal. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Alcala pumped the brakes of his Ram truck when he saw a member of his association, Jesús Arvizu Valenzuela, cutting hay in a field that stood out for its lushness. But Arvizu, 68, told him the pasture would soon lie fallow — brown like the unirrigated land that surrounded it.
“They won’t give us water anymore,” he said.
“The wells aren’t working either?” Alcala asked.
Arvizu shook his head. “They’re dry. Completely.”
‘A MATTER OF IDENTITY’
Five hundred years ago, there were no cattle here.
The first cows were brought to Mexico by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. In Sonora, Jesuit missionaries encouraged Indigenous tribes, who had subsisted mostly on beans, corn and squash, to raise them.
By the second half of the 20th century, livestock had become big business here, with cattle roaming over 85% of the state. Tens of thousands of ranchers raised steers to sell at auction, many for export to the United States. Ranchers here say Sonora’s mix of native grasses give their beef a distinctive texture.
“Very juicy and soft,” Alcala proudly explained.
Ranch hand Ernesto Flores Morales tends to healthy livestock at Rancho La Ventana in La Noria de Cuco, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
There were always periods of drought that ranchers had to endure — but in recent decades, climate change has made things worse.
Average rainfall has been decreasing for years. By the second half of this century, climate experts predict that Sonora will receive 20% to 30% less rain than today and regularly see temperatures as high as 122 degrees.
América Lutz Ley, a social scientist at El Colegio de Sonora who studies land use, is one of a growing number of people in the state who believe cattle ranching in its current form is not sustainable, largely because of the huge amount of water required to grow food for the herds.
“We live in a desert yet we are in the business of exporting water in the form of livestock,” she said.
Then there’s the fact that cattle emit significant levels of methane, a major driver of global warming. Mexico’s 34 million cattle are responsible for about 10% of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Lutz wishes there was more political will to promote alternatives to ranching. But she acknowledges that major changes are unlikely as long as prices for steers remain high and beef continues to be “a matter of identity” in Sonora.
She grew up spending weekends at carne asadas eating flour tortillas stuffed with salsa, guacamole and thin cuts of charred beef. It’s a family ritual so beloved here that even Lutz still indulges in it.
Rosendo Godinez, left, and his brother Cesar Godinez, remove the meat from cooked cows heads to later sell tacos de cabeza, or tacos made with the meat. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Manuel Medina, foreground, cuts carne asada for a customer at Carniceria Chihuahua in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
It’s not easy changing culture.
Gutierrez knows that. For him and his friends, ranching is more than a livelihood — it’s a way of life.
As they drove on, the sky began to darken. A few fat raindrops hit the truck’s windshield. It seemed the cicadas had been right.
Alcala optimistically turned on his wipers. But a minute later, the rain stopped and he turned them off.
A PAINFUL DECISION
Early the next morning, Gutierrez and his two friends crowded into a different pickup, this time to check on Aldama’s ranch.
The sky was pink with sunrise. The radio was playing an accordion-heavy corrido about three brothers on horseback setting off at dawn to a party on a ranch.
As they turned off the highway onto Aldama’s property, Gutierrez exclaimed with delight.
“It rained, Julio!”
The storm they had driven through the day before had been more generous in this region. Butterflies flitted about orange and pink wildflowers that appeared to have bloomed overnight.
“It’s green and fresh and I’m happy because it rained,” said Aldama as his Chevy splashed through scattered puddles.
But he knew that one decent rain wouldn’t be enough.
Manuel Bustamante Parra walks through a field of bones from dead livestock that died of starvation on the dry and barren ground. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
“The ranch is still in crisis,” Aldama said. “There’s no grass.”
He signaled to a field where a month ago his son and some friends had planted sorghum for his animals.
Weeks later, the field was barren except for the empty cans of Bud Light the young men had downed after finishing their work.
“It should have been a foot high by now,” Aldama said. “We planted sorghum but only beer has grown.”
They came to a pen where a ranch hand was milking cows. During the hottest months of the drought, Aldama had kept most of his cattle alive by feeding them carrots he had grown on another plot he owned.
He proudly appraised the half dozen calves, some just a few weeks old, that were competing with the ranch hand to get milk from their mother.
But selling all of the calves in a few months wouldn’t make up for the costs of keeping his herd alive, he said.
His grandparents founded this ranch, growing it from just a few cattle to a lucrative business. Lately their descendants had been talking, and had recently come to a painful decision.
Unless there are recurring, penetrative rains in August, the family will sell half of its herd. Where the cow pastures once grew, they are thinking about planting agaves — which require little water and are used to make a stiff local liquor called bacanora.
“I don’t see a future in ranching,” Aldama said, his voice cracking. “It’s a really good business when it rains, but lately it’s all losses.”
But the power of tradition is strong. Stronger, sometimes, than reason.
Fishermen clean their catch of tilapia on Agua Caliente reservoir. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Gutierrez did everything he could to keep feeding his cows. To raise money, he started buying and selling tilapia and carp caught from the local dam. But that business tanked as the dam nearly went dry.
He and his wife, who works at a hospital, have decided that their two children should not have to endure such hardships. They are studying in Ciudad Obregon, the nearest city.
“I suffered a lot and I don’t want them to suffer,” Gutierrez said.
He still doesn’t know what he’ll do — try to rebuild his herd or give up.
On a recent hot afternoon, he was commiserating with Manuel Bustamante Parra, a 58-year-old friend in similar straits.
Bustamante used to have 28 cattle, but now has 19. He did his best to save the hungry animals in their final days — using a rope-and-pully system to haul them upright to eat when they were too weak to stand — but it wasn’t enough.
Every few days, Bustamante rides his horse to a different small chapel in the region. He asks for rain as he lights candles to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He and Gutierrez have been traversing these hills on horseback for as long as they can remember.
“I’m too old to learn something new,” Gutierrez said.
“We’ll keep ranching until all the cows die,” Bustamante told him. “Or we do.”
Manuel Bustamante Parra has seen his livestock die of starvation because of the drought. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Cecilia Sánchez in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
Opinion: Miami’s $6 billion sea wall won’t save the city from flooding — green hybrid designs make more sense
By Landolf Rhode – Barbarigos July 31, 2021
Pair the strength of less obtrusive hardened infrastructure with nature-based solutions
One possible hybrid design to protect Miami is the SEAHIVE, which combines hollow channels of concrete with mangroves above and corals below for natural protection. GALLO HERBERT ARCHITECTS
Miami is all about the water and living life outdoors. Walking paths and parks line large stretches of downtown waterfront with a stunning bay view.
This downtown core is where the Army Corps of Engineers plans to build a $6 billion sea wall, 20 feet high in places, through downtown neighborhoods and right between the Brickell district’s high-rises and the bay.
There’s no question that the city is at increasing risk of flooding as sea level rises and storms intensify with climate change. A hurricane as powerful as 1992’s Andrew or 2017’s Irma making a direct hit on Miami would devastate the city.
But the sea wall the Army Corps is proposing – protecting only 6 miles of downtown and the financial district from a storm surge – can’t save Miami and Dade County. Most of the city will be outside the wall, unprotected; the wall will still trap water inside; and the Corps hasn’t closely studied what the construction of a high sea wall would do to water quality. At the same time, it would block the water views that the city’s economy thrives on.
Living with water today doesn’t look the same as it did 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago. Parts of Miami now regularly see “sunny day” flooding during high tides. Salt water infiltrates basements and high-rise parking garages, and tidal flooding is forecast to occur more frequently as sea level rises. When storms come through, the storm surge adds to that already high water.
Hurricanes are less common than tidal flooding, but their destructive potential is greater, and that is what the Army Corps is focused on with its sea wall plan.
If Miami Beach were an undeveloped barrier island, and if thick mangrove forests were still common along the South Florida shoreline, the Miami area would have more natural protection against storm surge and wave action. But most of those living buffers are long gone.
There are still ways nature can help preserve the beauty of Miami’s marine playground, though.
Each area of coastline is unique and requires different protective measures based on the dynamics of how the water flows in and out. Given Miami’s limited space, living shorelines alone won’t be enough against a major hurricane, but there are powerful ways to pair them with solid “gray” infrastructure that are more successful than either alone.
Hybrid solutions mix green and gray
Nobody wants to look at a cement breakwater offshore. But if you’re looking at a breakwater covered with corals and hospitable to marine life, and you can go out and swim on it, that’s different.
Corals help the structure dissipate wave energy better, and at the same time they improve water quality, habitat, recreation, tourism and quality of life. For a lot of people, those are some of Miami’s main selling points.
By pairing corals and mangroves with a more sustainable and eco-friendly hard infrastructure, hybrid solutions can be far less obtrusive than a tall sea wall.
Closer to shore, we’re experimenting with a novel modular marine and estuarine system we call “SEAHIVE.” Below the water line, water flows through hollow hexagonal channels of concrete, losing energy. The top can be filled with soil to grow coastal vegetation such as mangroves, providing even more protection as well as an ecosystem that benefits the bay.
We’re currently working on testing SEAHIVE as a green engineering alternative for North Bay Village, an inhabited island in the bay, and as the infrastructure of a newly developed marine park where these “green-gray” reef and mangrove designs will be showcased.
What about the rest of Miami?
The Army Corps of Engineers’ draft plan – a final version is expected in the fall – would give nature-based solutions little role beyond a fairly small mangrove and sea grass restoration project to the south. The Corps determined that natural solutions alone would require too much space and wouldn’t be as effective as hard infrastructure in a worst-case scenario.
Instead, the Army Corps’ plan focuses on the 6-mile sea wall, flood gates and elevating or strengthening buildings. It basically protects the downtown infrastructure but leaves everyone else on their own.
Sea walls and flood gates can also affect water flow and harm water quality. The Corps’ own documents warn that the sea walls and gates will affect wildlife and ecosystems, including permanent loss of protective corals, mangroves and sea grass beds.
We would like to see a plan for all of Miami-Dade County that considers the value that green and hybrid solutions bring for marine life, tourism, fishing and general quality of life, in addition to their protective services for the shoreline.
Both types – green and gray – would take time to build out, particularly if the sea wall plan were challenged in court. And both run a risk of failure. Corals can die in a heat wave, and a storm can damage mangroves; but storms can also undermine engineered solutions, like the New Orleans levee system during Hurricane Katrina.
To help build resilience, our colleagues at the University of Miami have been breeding corals to be more resistant to climate change, investigating novel cementitious materials and noncorrosive reinforcements and developing new designs for coastal structures.
Miami in the future
The Miami skyline. GETTY IMAGES
Miami will be different in the coming decades, and the changes are already starting.
High ground is at a premium, and that’s showing up in real-estate decisions that are pushing lower-income residents out and into less safe areas. Anybody looking back at Miami will probably think the region should have done a better job of managing growth and maybe even managing some form of retreat from threatened areas.
We don’t want to see Miami become Venice or a city walled off from the water. We think Miami can thrive by making use of the local ecosystem with novel green engineering solutions and an architecture that adapts.
Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos is an assistant professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at the University of Miami. Brian Haus is a professor of ocean sciences at the University of Miami.
Trash, fires and soaring home prices: Idaho copes with city dwellers fleeing COVID
Jess Chase – Lubitz, Contributor July 31, 2021
Idaho’s state Capitol, with the Boise skyline in the background. (iStockphoto/Getty Images)
Bill Rauer, executive director of the Idaho Building Contractors Association, was shocked when in the midst of the pandemic he started hearing about people from out of state showing up on the doorsteps of local homeowners and offering $50,000 to $150,000 over market price for their homes.
“When the pandemic hit, it just seemed like everyone who was contemplating going to Idaho thought, ‘That’s it, we’re going,’” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Last year, Idaho’s population took the top spot for year-to-year growth, with an increase of 2.1 percent, and second place for the fastest-growing state in the country over the past decade, with an increase of 17.3 percent, according to U.S. census data. But Idaho’s popularity soared even more during the COVID-19 pandemic. The meteoric rise in its appeal, and the growing pains locals are now facing, are an example of the aftermath of the urban-to-rural exodus in evidence throughout the country.
Since the pandemic hit the United States, New Yorkers have flocked to upstate New York, Vermont and Florida. Populations in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and a few other states with big cities dropped so much that they each lost a House seat in Congress. Meanwhile, Utah saw a 1.5 percent increase in just one year, and North Dakota’s population hit an all-time high. These numbers, which already reveal a strong trend in urban-to-rural migration, barely scratch the surface, because the census data, which was released in July 2020, covers only the first few months of a pandemic that finished 2020 strong and went into 2021 roaring.
Homes in suburban Salt Lake City, which is also bucking the trend of sluggish U.S. population growth. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
Now, 17 months later, Idahoans and people in other rural states throughout the country are realizing that the increased population wasn’t just a phase, and locals are trying to figure out how they can maintain the serenity that rural life allows with the influx of people who have arrived seeking just that.
“This Idaho is nothing like the Idaho I grew up in,” said Rauer. “But I fall short of calling that a bad thing.”
The increased population has its advantages, including greater economic opportunity, more tax dollars and more people active in local politics. But as more people leave apartment buildings for big yards and outdoor recreation, those who have lived in rural areas for generations are watching their home state change before their eyes.
“The real issue that we’re seeing is the lack of available housing,” said Chris St. Germain, director of economic development in Clearwater County, in northern Idaho.
In one part of northern Idaho, Coeur d’Alene, the median sales were up 47 percent from March 2020 to March 2021, according to the Wall Street Journal/Realtor.comHousing Market Index.
“It’s really changing the economy,” said Christine Bradbury, a fourth-generation Idahoan. “On the one hand, we have people coming to shop, which is good for small businesses. But where I see really, really hurting is our younger generation, who need affordable housing. I have two teenagers, and I’m not sure where they are going to live.”
Employers are also finding it impossible to hire new employees, both seasonal and full time, because of the housing shortage.
Residential homes in Boise. (Jeremy Erickson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We offered three people paramedic jobs over the past six months, and none of them could take it because we couldn’t find them housing,” said Don Gardner, emergency manager and ambulance director for Clearwater County.
Bradbury, who checks the housing market often, is also finding nothing, she said. “What there is is very substandard housing for $1,000 a month. Normally, substandard housing would be a couple hundred a month.”
Rauer said the percentage of empty homes has dropped by 70 percent and there’s extreme pressure to build new homes quickly. “We’re not keeping up,” he said. “It’s just not happening.”
Prices of empty lots are also skyrocketing. Two parcels of land owned by the University of Idaho were auctioned on July 7, and a press release from the Idaho Department of Lands said they were expected to generate at least $6 million. On July 11, a new press release reported that they were sold for $35.2 million.
In the meantime, people are staying in campers or RV parks. Bradbury said she had heard people were even paying monthly rents in hotels in order to jump on the next open property.
Orofino, Idaho, a small town in northern-central Idaho, has seen a sharp increase in population over the past year. At the Best Western Lodge, the manager, Tanna Zywina, said that no monthly rates are offered, but that occupancy rates were up 25 to 30 percent in December 2020 and January 2021. Other hotels in the area declined to comment.
“COVID really changed our world,” said Bobbi Kaufman, Orofino’s planning and zoning administrator. “I do think it has changed the quality of life. Having to share your space with people, more garbage on the roads, more complaints about the services we don’t provide.”
Local residents say that they are seeing a buildup of trash on the highways and hiking trails and that they worry about the effects of the newcomers on the environment. “Tribal members and local Idahoans live a subsistence lifestyle,” Bradbury said. “We hunt and fish and feed our families that way. Urban people get very concerned with hunting and are moving in and trying to change the regulations.”
A man fly-fishing on Tin Cup Creek near Wayan, Idaho, in 2020. (Jon G. Fuller/VW Pics via Zuma Wire)
Bradbury said she is also concerned about the impact from recreation. “The incoming people have a lot of toys,” she said. “Motorized toys. UTVs that are basically like little cars that are wide and fast and noisy. You have to constantly forecast what’s going to be the next toy du jour.”
Venetia Gempler, a public affairs officer for Boise National Forest Service, said it’s been difficult to keep up with the influx. “We saw a huge increase in use on the national forest, because that was the place that was open for people to go,” she said. “But on top of that, there was an additional layer of people moving into Idaho, and we’re surmising that the impact we’re seeing is from these new visitors.”
“A lot of our campgrounds were designed many decades ago,” she said, and “can’t sustain” large motorized vehicles like RVs and motorized homes.
The forest service has partnered with other organizations to create a campaign called Recreate Responsibly Idaho. The partnership started as a way to get out information about COVID, but it has since evolved into a general information campaign about how to be responsible when you venture outdoors.
“There’s a big effort to make sure people are putting out their campfires when they leave,” Gempler said. “You might douse a campfire, but is it really out? Do you feel heat when you put your hand over it? These problems stem from people not knowing.”
The Orofino area, along with many other areas in the West, was overwhelmed by wildfires during the first few weeks of July, which were exacerbated by a long heat wave. As of July 12, the forest fires were estimated to cover 2,187 acres.
Gardner, in Clearwater County, is finding that urbanites expect more public services than rural areas provide. He recently had a call from someone asking if the county would remove all the vegetation in their yard to avoid wildfires. “It’s not that easy,” he said. “We don’t do that.”
The wide open spaces. (Eye/Em/Getty Images)
Such expectations have become a constant in Gardner’s job. “I’m trying to tell people as much as I can that just because you pay for trash pickup doesn’t mean you’ll get it. Just because you live on a county road doesn’t mean the road will get plowed,” he said.
Ambulance calls have at least doubled in the last year, and possibly tripled, according to Gardner.
“It’s a combination of an increase in people and the expectations they have for services,” he said. “We’re seeing more senior calls, but we don’t provide pickups for doctors’ appointments.”
St. Germain at the Clearwater economic office says it is making an effort to respond to what newcomers want. She said it’s busy creating loops for people driving ATVs that connect to the towns, trying to improve internet connectivity, put in coffee shops and provide more diverse food and tennis courts. “We are trying to be responsive to what people are asking for, but the limitation is always: Can you get land access?”
Bradbury worries about the demands of the new population. As more people come who believe that the city and state should provide those services, more people will vote for higher taxes.
“It’s a clash of cultures, I guess I would say,” she said. “You don’t even need to think of it in a political sense. It’s more of an urban-and-rural disconnect. What some of these people are fleeing, they are actually then re-creating when they get here.”
Global Warming Will Kill 83 Million People in the Next 80 Years
Jonathan Tirone
(Bloomberg) — A population equivalent to that of Germany — 83 million people — could be killed by 2100 because of rising temperatures caused by greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a new study that might influence how markets price carbon pollution.
The research from Columbia University’s Earth Institute introduces a new metric to help companies and governments assess damages wrought by climate change this century. Accounting for the “mortality cost of carbon” could give polluters new reasons to clean up by dramatically raising the cost of emissions.
“Based on the decisions made by individuals, businesses or governments, this tells you how many lives will be lost or saved,” said Columbia’s Daniel Bressler, whose research was published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications. “It quantifies the mortality impact of those decisions” by reducing questions down “to a more personal, understandable level.”
Read More: Life and Death in Our Hot Future Will be Shaped by Today’s Income Inequality
Adapting models developed by Yale climate economist and Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus, Bressler calculated the number of direct heat deaths that will be caused by current global-warming trajectories. His calculations don’t include the number of people who might die from rising seas, superstorms, crop failures or changing disease patterns affected by atmospheric warming. That means that the projected deaths — which approximate the number of people killed in World War II — could still be a “vast underestimate,” Bressler said.
Every 4,434 tons of carbon spewed into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2020 will kill one person this century, according to the peer-reviewed calculations that see the planet warming 4.1º Celsius by 2100. So far the planet has warmed about 1.1º C, compared to pre-industrial times.
The volume of pollution emitted over the lifetime of three average U.S. residents is estimated to contribute to the death of another person. Bressler said the highest mortality rates can be expected in Earth’s hottest and poorest regions in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
Read More: How Biden Is Putting a Number on Carbon’s True Cost: QuickTake
The new metric could significantly affect how economies calculate the so-called social cost of carbon, which U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration set at $51 a ton in February. That price on pollution, which complements carbon markets like the European Union’s Emissions Trading System, helps governments set policy by accounting for future damages. But the scale revealed by Bressler’s research suggests the social cost of carbon should be significantly higher, at about $258 a ton, if the world’s economies want to reduce deaths caused by global warming.
A higher cost on carbon pollution could immediately induce larger emission cuts, which in turn could save lives. Capping global average temperature increase to 2.4ºC by the end of the century, compared with modest emissions reductions that would warm the planet 3.4ºC, could save 74 million people from dying of heat.
“People shouldn’t take their per-person mortality emissions too personally,” said Bressler. Governments need to mobilize “large-scale policies such as carbon pricing, cap and trade and investments in low carbon technologies and energy storage.”
While Covid-19 has shaken much of human society, the threat posed by global warming has not gone away.
Human activities have increased carbon dioxide emissions, driving up temperatures. Extreme weather and melting polar ice are among the possible effects.
What is climate change?
The Earth’s average temperature is about 15C but has been much higher and lower in the past.
There are natural fluctuations in the climate but scientists say temperatures are now rising faster than at many other times.
World is getting warmer
This is linked to the greenhouse effect, which describes how the Earth’s atmosphere traps some of the Sun’s energy.
Solar energy radiating back to space from the Earth’s surface is absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-emitted in all directions.
This heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface of the planet. Without this effect, the Earth would be about 30C colder and hostile to life.
Greenhouse effect
Scientists believe we are adding to the natural greenhouse effect, with gases released from industry and agriculture trapping more energy and increasing the temperature.
This is known as climate change or global warming.
What are greenhouse gases?
The greenhouse gas with the greatest impact on warming is water vapour. But it remains in the atmosphere for only a few days.
Carbon dioxide (CO2), however, persists for much longer. It would take hundreds of years for a return to pre-industrial levels and only so much can be soaked up by natural reservoirs such as the oceans.
Most man-made emissions of CO2 come from burning fossil fuels. When carbon-absorbing forests are cut down and left to rot, or burned, that stored carbon is released, contributing to global warming.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in about 1750, CO2 levels have risen by around 50%. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years.
Other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are also released through human activities but they are less abundant than carbon dioxide.
What is the evidence for warming?
The world is about one degree Celsius warmer than before widespread industrialization, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Satellite data also shows the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing mass. A recent study indicated East Antarctica may also have started to lose mass.
The effects of a changing climate can also be seen in vegetation and land animals. These include earlier flowering and fruiting times for plants and changes in the territories of animals.
How much will temperatures rise in future?
The change in the global surface temperature between 1850 and the end of the 21st Century is likely to exceed 1.5C, most simulations suggest.
The WMO says that if the current warming trend continues, temperatures could rise 3-5C by the end of this century.
Temperature rises of 2C had long been regarded as the gateway to dangerous warming. More recently, scientists and policymakers have argued that limiting temperature rises to 1.5C is safer.
An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2018 suggested that keeping to the 1.5C target would require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”.
The UN is leading a political effort to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions. China emits more CO2 than any other country. It is followed by the US and the European Union member states, although emissions per person are much greater there.
But even if we now cut greenhouse-gas emissions dramatically, scientists say the effects will continue. Large bodies of water and ice can take hundreds of years to respond to changes in temperature. And it takes CO2 decades to be removed from the atmosphere.
How will climate change affect us?
There is uncertainty about how great the impact of a changing climate will be.
It could cause fresh water shortages, dramatically alter our ability to produce food, and increase the number of deaths from floods, storms and heatwaves. This is because climate change is expected to increase the frequency of extreme weather events – though linking any single event to global warming is complicated.
As the world warms, more water evaporates, leading to more moisture in the air. This means many areas will experience more intense rainfall – and in some places snowfall. But the risk of drought in inland areas during hot summers will increase. More flooding is expected from storms and rising sea levels. But there are likely to be very strong regional variations in these patterns.
Poorer countries, which are least equipped to deal with rapid change, could suffer the most.
Plant and animal extinctions are predicted as habitats change faster than species can adapt. And the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the health of millions could be threatened by increases in malaria, water-borne disease and malnutrition.
As more CO2 is released into the atmosphere, uptake of the gas by the oceans increases, causing the water to become more acidic. This could pose major problems for coral reefs.
Global warming will cause further changes that are likely to create further heating. This includes the release of large quantities of methane as permafrost – frozen soil found mainly at high latitudes – melts.
Responding to climate change will be one of the biggest challenges we face this century.
Why it’s so hard and expensive to plug an abandoned well
Cathy Bussewitz
Ashley Williams Watt watches as a workover rig is used to help replug one of the abandoned wells at her ranch, Friday, July 9, 2021, near Crane, Texas. Some of her wells are leaking chemicals such as benzene, a known carcinogen, into fields and drinking water. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Ashley Williams Watt looks at an abandoned well wrapped with locks and chains on her ranch, Friday, July 9, 2021, near Crane, Texas. Some of her wells are leaking chemicals such as benzene, a known carcinogen, into fields and drinking water. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
In this June 2021 photo provided by rancher Ashley Williams Watt, the Estes 24 well leaks on the Antina ranch near Crane, Texas. Chevron, which is responsible for the abandoned well, has been working to re-plug it. Buried under the sand, it became unplugged and started leaking produced water, a byproduct of oil production that is considered a toxic substance. The rancher’s biggest worry is that it will get into her drinking water supply and the watershed, which flows into the nearby Pecos River. (Ashley Williams Watt via AP)
An oil well worker helps to re-plug an abandoned well on the ranch of Ashley Williams Watt, Friday, July 9, 2021, near Crane, Texas. The wells on Watt’s property seem to be unplugging themselves. Some are leaking dangerous chemicals into the ground, which are seeping into her cattle’s drinking water. And she doesn’t know how long it’s been going on. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Forgotten Wells Unplugged and Leaking
An estimated 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells across the country, forgotten or ignored by the energy companies that drilled them, are believed to be leaking toxic chemicals. Many of the wells are releasing methane, a greenhouse gas containing about 86 times the climate-warming power of carbon dioxide over two decades. Some are leaking chemicals such as benzene, a known carcinogen, into fields and groundwater.
Here are some questions and answers.
WHAT IS AN ABANDONED WELL?
An oil or gas well is considered abandoned when it’s reached the end of its useful life and is no longer producing enough fuel to make money. If the company that owned the well went bankrupt, or there’s no owner to be found to plug or maintain it, then the abandoned well is considered “orphaned.”
WHAT DANGER DOES AN ABANDONED WELL POSE?
Over time, the amount of oil and gas a company can extract from a well declines. At that point, many operators will cap a well to seal it temporarily. Sometimes, wells sit in that “idle” or “inactive” state for months or even years. But to prevent chemicals from leaking into the air or soil, a well must be properly plugged with cement. Left unplugged, oil and gas wells are at risk of leaking methane into the atmosphere and toxic chemicals into groundwater.
HOW DO YOU PLUG AN OIL AND GAS WELL?
The idea is to fill certain parts of the well with cement, to stop toxic chemicals from leaking into aquifers or the air, and to eventually bury the well underground.
First, crews must remove any pumpjacks or other equipment that might have been left at surface. They then examine the well for problems: leaks, deteriorated casings, cracked cement. They fish out random sticks or debris that might have wedged over time into the wellbore — the vertical shaft that is drilled to extract oil and gas.
“If you leave a well ignored for a long enough time, the casing begins to deteriorate inside,” said Luke Plants, chief operating officer at Plants and Goodwin, a company that plugs oil and gas wells throughout Appalachia. “Every kid that walks by and sees this open pipe throws a rock down in there.”
Next, the pluggers must measure the wellbore and determine to what depths they must pour cement to keep the well from leaking into water tables or other underground geologic formations.
The older the well is, the trickier the operation. When a well is orphaned, detailed records of how the well was drilled might be missing. The crews must try to determine, based on records of nearby wells, what is occurring underground. If a well had been abandoned decades ago, crews might have to build roads to move heavy equipment needed for the job. If a well is found under a driveway or a parking lot, crews must operate carefully around homes, schools or electric wires.
WHAT DOES IT COST?
The cost to plug an orphaned well varies depending on its age, depth and location. In North Dakota, where some wells are drilled to depths of more than 20,000 feet, it can cost $150,000 to plug a single well and restore the land around it. In Pennsylvania, the state budgets about $33,000 to plug each well.
Many states require companies to post bonds to pay for well plugging. But the bond amount is generally far lower than the cost of plugging. On federal lands, the average amount the government held in bonds was just $2,122 per well in 2018, according to the Government Accountability Office. Some groups are pushing states to tighten rules on how long a well can remain idle or to raise the bond amounts required of operators.
An effort in 2005 to obtain funding from Congress for a federal well-plugging program failed to secure much money. Many states, including Texas, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and North Dakota, fund their plugging operations through fees or taxes paid by the oil and gas industry. But that money isn’t enough to plug all the wells that need it. And state lawmakers often face pushback from groups that would rather have that money go to education or other community needs.
In Pennsylvania, plugging all the known orphaned wells could cost $250 million to $300 million, said Seth Pelepko, the environmental program manager at the Bureau of Oil and Gas Planning and Program Management in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. But his office has secured only enough money to spend about $1 million annually. Pelepko estimates that plugging all the wells there — including those of unknown location — could range into the billions of dollars.
In Colorado, state regulators spent $14.4 million over three years to plug and reclaim wells after operators had set aside only $1.3 million, according to the Western Organization of Resource Councils, a network of grassroots groups involved with land stewardship. Colorado would need about $5.3 million a year for five years to address the current inventory of orphaned wells, the group said.
Why are we seeing so many record-shattering weather events right now?
Scott Sutherland
New research reveals how looking only at past weather events is no longer enough when preparing for the extreme weather to come. Instead, with rapid warming fueling recent “record-shattering” events, and even more expected in the years to come, we need to plan for extremes we have never experienced before to reduce the risk of being taken by surprise.
The news so far this summer has been inundated with stories of record-breaking weather. The extreme heat wave that spread across the Pacific Northwest and the severe wildfires that followed, the “terrifying” rainfall and flooding across central Europe, the once-in-1,000-years flooding that impacted parts of China — all these events have piled up onto one another over the last two months.
Vernon BC wildfire Gavin Phillips/Instagram. A wildfire burns near the town of Vernon, B.C, on July 9, 2021. Credit: Gavin Phillips/Instagram
In the past, it was difficult to directly attribute specific severe and extreme weather events to global warming and climate change. More recently, by putting these events into context with the past, researchers have revealed clearer connections. This has allowed us to get a better sense of just how much more severe any particular weather event was due to the rise in global temperatures.
“Weather, climate and water-related hazards are increasing in frequency and intensity as a result of climate change,” Prof. Petteri Taalas, the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said in a statement. “The human and economic toll was highlighted with tragic effect by the torrential rainfall and devastating flooding and loss of life in central Europe and China in the past week.”
Flooding in Germany – Sebastian Schmitt-picture alliance via Getty Images – GettyImages-1233993272
The village of Rhineland-Palatinate, Kordel, Germany, is flooded by the high water of the Kyll on July 15, 2021. Credit: Sebastian Schmitt/picture alliance via Getty Images
“Recent record-breaking heat waves in North America are clearly linked to global warming,” Prof. Taalas explained. As the WMO reported in early July, climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions made this heat wave at least 150 times more likely to happen.
“What we are seeing is unprecedented. You’re not supposed to break records by four or five degrees Celsius,” Friederike Otto, of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, said of the extreme Pacific Northwest heat wave. “This is such an exceptional event that we can’t rule out the possibility that we’re experiencing heat extremes today that we only expected to come at higher levels of global warming.”
The WMO says that the Pacific Northwest heat wave in June of 2021 was virtually impossible without the influence of climate change. Credit: NOAA Climate.gov
“But, increasingly, heavy rainfall episodes also bear the footprint of climate change. As the atmosphere gets warmer it holds more moisture which means it will rain more during storms, increasing the risk of floods,” Taalas added.
According to the WMO, droughts, storms, floods, and extreme temperatures top the list of hazards that have caused the greatest number of human deaths over the past 50 years. Floods and storms are also among the top 10 with respect to economic losses.
In their upcoming publication WMO Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes (1970-2019), they show that weather, climate, and water hazards accounted for half of all disasters, nearly half of all reported deaths, and almost three-quarters of all reported economic losses over the 50-year period.
Rescuers search cars floodwaters in China – STR-AFP via Getty Images – GettyImages-695493178
This photo taken on June 12, 2017, shows submerged cars in a flooded street in Guiyang, in China’s southwest Guizhou province. Sudden heavy rains flooded a number of streets in the city. Credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images
So, what’s behind these unprecedented and record-shattering weather events?
The science is clear. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour, which makes severe rainfall and flooding events more likely to occur. A weakened jet stream (potentially caused by rapid warming of the Arctic) results in weather systems more easily stalling in place. Thus, some regions can see persistent rainfall and storms, while others are trapped under intense heat domes, causing prolonged heat waves and droughts.
Still, a new study published in Nature Climate Change has delved deeper into exactly why weather and climate records are not just being broken in recent years, but are being shattered by wide margins.
Sunset in intense NW heat wave – ROBYN BECK-AFP via Getty Images – GettyImages-1233951112
The sun sets behind Joshua Trees in Lancaster, California where temperatures reached 41.6 degrees Celsius on July 12, 2021. Wildfires were burning across more than one million acres of the western United States and Canada at the time, as scorching temperatures held their grip on areas reeling from a brutal weekend heat wave. Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
Based on their findings, the researchers determined that the strongest influence on the likelihood of any event shattering a previous record was the rate of warming — how quickly temperatures were rising, rather than the precise degree of temperature rise. Based on their simulations, this was especially true when there was a surge in temperatures following a period of little to no warming.
“Thus, primarily due to the accelerating warming rate the probability of record-shattering extremes rapidly increases in high-emission scenarios from low values in the twentieth century to high values by the second-half of the twenty-first century,” they wrote, referring to the ‘business as usual’ trajectory the world is currently on for greenhouse gas emissions.
As emissions continue to rise, causing global warming to further accelerate, the likelihood and severity of these events is expected to increase.
From their models, they found that there was less than a five per cent chance per year of a record-shattering event occurring during the past 30 years (from 1992-2020). Under the ‘business as usual’ emissions scenario, that likelihood jumps to over 22 per cent per year between 2021-2050, and to over 50 per cent per year from 2051-2080. The chances that we will see events far beyond just ‘record-shattering’ also increased, from less than one per cent per year over the past 30 years, to over 17 per cent per year between 2051-2080.
Probability of climate extreme 2051-2080 – Fischer, et al. Nat Clim Change (2021)
This map plots out the probability that different parts of the world will experience at least one record-shattering climate extreme event, per year, between the years 2051-2080. Credit: Fischer, et al./Nature Climate Change (2021)
If emissions were reduced, they said, the frequency and intensity of events suck as heat waves would still be higher than they were in the past, but the chances of record-shattering extremes would rapidly decrease.
“Recent climate extremes have broken long-standing records by large margins. Such extremes unprecedented in the observational period often have substantial impacts due to a tendency to adapt to the highest intensities, and no higher, experienced during a lifetime,” the researchers wrote.
This tendency will have even greater impacts on society in the future, as these events worsen. Thus, the researchers emphasize that any infrastructure plans we make to adapt to worsening climate impacts need to take into account the potential for these record-shattering events.
“We show that taking into account the warming rate is vital for adaptation decisions,” they concluded.
