How climate change affects various areas will differ. For example, scientists say that melting ice in Greenland will cause the sea level to rise more along the coast of the northeastern United States than other areas.
(NEWSCOM/file)Photos (1 of 1)
Adapting to climate change depends on site-specific knowledge
Column: One size doesn't fit all when it comes to coping with the effects of climate change.
By Robert C. Cowen | Columnist for The Christian Science Monitor/ June 15, 2009 edition
New research has put climate change in a more challenging – although not entirely discouraging – perspective: It’s too late to avoid some unpleasant effects of global warming, such as a rising sea level and water shortages. But there’s still time to avert the worst foreseeable consequences, such as an even larger sea level rise and even more extreme temperatures.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., made that point in a comprehensive study published in April. To quote the study’s lead author Warren Washington, “This research indicates that we can no longer avoid significant warming during this century. But if the world wants to implement [drastic greenhouse gas] emission cuts, we could stabilize the threat of climate change and avoid catastrophe.”
In other words, we’re being challenged to adapt to significant climate change while at the same time making difficult economic adjustments to curb greenhouse gas emissions. There’s plenty of discussion about curbing the gases and some discussion of adapting to what now seems inevitable environmental change. There’s relatively little focus on how to deal with these two challenges simultaneously.
Getting the balance right will be tricky. The consequences of climate change already underway can be subtle. Melting icecaps can raise general sea level. But the actual rise along populated coastlines is not the same everywhere around the world. It depends on more than the volume of water in the ocean.
Fill a bathtub and note where the water stands along the sides. Now vigorously swirl the water with your hand. The pattern of flow will make the water stand higher at some places along the sides than at others. This happens in the ocean. If climate change alters ocean circulations, sea level will rise higher along some coastlines than you’d predict from just noting how much water melting ice contributes.
Another NCAR study published in late May showed how melting Greenland ice not only adds to seawater volume but changes currents to push water even higher along northeastern coasts of North America. Sea level there could rise 12 to 20 inches more than along other North American coastal areas by 2100. The study’s lead author, Aixue Hu, warned that “major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise.”
This illustrates the fact that adapting to climate change in specific areas depends on developing a sophisticated knowledge of exactly what will happen in that specific area. You can’t just base plans on expected large-scale averages, such as global sea level rise.
At the same time, developing a green energy economy for a specific site will depend on that adaptation. If, for example, sea level rise can be expected to overwhelm today’s coastal zone, it would make no sense to develop wind and ocean wave energy installations in that zone.
Changes now underway in sea level, in patterns of drought and precipitation, or in river flow will be different in different areas around the world. Some areas my become unlivable. People may flock to more favored regions. How people adapt to their new situations will determine how they use energy. Successfully adapting to climate change while curbing greenhouse gases depends on site-specific knowledge – knowing what’s going on where people live.
Broad-brush planning won’t cut it.
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Comments
3. Dan | 06.16.09
Excellent article. One program which the United States can and MUST begin immediately would take advantage of the fact that our geography is leading to increasing precipitation in the Mississippi River Basin, because food production is dependent on water, and fresh water is fast becoming one of our scarcest resources.
The Mississippi River is North America’s longest and largest river in terms of discharge, and the fifth largest discharge river worldwide.
The Mississippi River Basin encompasses more than 40 percent of the U.S. land area, and is the world’s second largest such basin, draining 4.76 million square kilometers (1.83 million square miles), including tributaries from thirty-two U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The Mississippi River watershed encompasses 40 percent of the contiguous United States. Major tributaries include the Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas–Red–White, and Tennessee Rivers. Since 1948, while rivers all over the world which depend on fossil water (glacial melt) for their flow have seen those amounts diminish, the Mississippi has seen an increase of 22%.
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Mi-Oc/Mississippi-River-Basin.html
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-discharge-JC09.pdf
As a result of these facts, North America has the water availble to stand a chance of producing enough food to prevent a global human disaster as evidence mounts of mounting global precipitation shortfalls and vanishing glacial rivers elsewhere.
The north/south configuration of the Rockies, the Mississippi valley itself, and the Appalachians ensures that warm, humid, equatorial air will continue to come into contact with cold, dry, arctic air. Our legendary thunderstorms with their huge hail and destructive tornadoes tell the tale. The same weather machine which has seen increasing fury of Gulf state hurricanes also drives greater quantities of moisture further inland. Horribly, we are benefiting from global climate change. We owe it to humanity to take wise advantage of this cruel reality and in the process help the world make it through the hot, dry future to come.
Eurasia is cursed by a mountain barrier, which stretches from the Pyrenees in Portugal, across the Alps, Transylvanian, Caucuses, Zagros, Hindu Kush, to the Himalayas. This high mega-range prohibits southern equatorial air from contacting the arctic air to the north. Precipitation levels north of this mega-range are now dependent on the moisture brought from the warm north Atlantic ocean currents across Europe, and the warm Pacific currents across northern China. These are likely to be disrupted as the huge quantities of fresh, cold water pouring into the northern oceans creates a saline/temperature inversion, and shuts the current “engine” down. South America has the north/south Andes mountains, but the land mass of that continent tapers off to the south. Africa has no east/west impediment either (but the Sahara desert), however it too tapers off to the south in terms of arable land mass.
And right now, every major river in the world but the Mississippi is seeing huge reductions in outflow as this article (from the AP, Tue Apr 21, 2009 based on the ucar.edu article linked above) shows:
“”…for many of the world’s large rivers the effects of human activities on yearly streamflow are likely small compared with that of climate variations during 1948-2004.”
“Discharge of river water into the oceans deposits sediment near the river mouth and also affects worldwide ocean circulation patterns, which are driven by variations in water temperature and salinity.
In the United States, the flow of the Mississippi River increased by 22 percent over the period because of increased precipitation across the Midwest. On the other hand, the Columbia River’s flow declined by about 14 percent, mainly because of reduced precipitation and higher water usage.
Major rivers showing declines in flow included the Amazon, Congo, Changjiang (Yangtze), Mekong, Ganges, Irrawaddy, Amur, Mackenzie, Xijiang, Columbia and Niger.”
So the US needs to begin taking immediate, massive action. We could produce millions of jobs in manufacturing, construction, and agriculture with one, massive, federal project– a Floodwater Sequestration and Re-Introduction Program.
A huge network of high-capacity pipelines stretching up and down our flood-prone rivers and reaching as far as the foothills of the Rockies and the Appalachians needs to be built. During the 100 year floods which appear to be happening every five years, as much of this precious fresh water as possible should be extracted, and using wind-generated electricity, pumped back up the high plains to the west and the valleys of the Appalachians to the east. Along the way it would be treated and filtered, before being re-introduced via two methods: 1. Actual release into the millions of playa lakes, and creek, stream, and river beds which are natural re-charge venues for the many now-depleted (by wasteful irrigation techniques), underground aquifers; and 2. Re-introduced directly into the water table using the same wells which the original water was taken out with.
Hundreds of millions of jobs would be created in the manufacturing and construction sectors, as well as in the operation of this system– and could become the ground floor of a green revolution in industry and agriculture to come.
Using sustainable agricultural techniques like no-till/permaculture, drip irrigation, and ending our reliance on monoculture, the rich soils of our central continental mass– with adequate water for irrigation during future droughts– might be able to keep the population of the world from collapsing for many decades while we deal with the causes which have threatened this unprecedented environmental and agricultural collapse which the species not faces.
4. Jan | 06.17.09
I find it strange that the author believes getting a balance between reducing climate-changing emissions and adaptation is ‘tricky.’ Nothing tricky about it. One goal must be to reduce emissions quickly and drastically, while also reducing energy demand permanently; the other is the adaptation efforts.
If we reduce demand and emissions significantly, the adaptation efforts will not be as extreme or costly because we might be able to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas levels at a level that will “only” increase global temperatures some 5-6 degrees F. If not, we are in for constant warfare over global resources that everyone wants in a climate where food production and water availability are in crisis, and where disease and health stresses are the norm.
The suggestion by Dan that giant water pipelines be constructed MIGHT be an ecological solution. The problem is that the water would not be “re-introduced via two methods: 1. Actual release into the millions of playa lakes, and creek, stream, and river beds which are natural re-charge venues for the many now-depleted (by wasteful irrigation techniques), underground aquifers; and 2. Re-introduced directly into the water table using the same wells which the original water was taken out with.”
If that much money is spent on water transport, you can bet that we short-sighted humans will use it for economic development or to maintain our wasteful lifestyles, not for keeping our natural infrastructure healthy.
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1. bob carter | 06.15.09
Robert Cowen makes a critically important point which is all but universally ignored amongst policy makers.
The point is that governments have a sovereign duty to care for the people through the climate change effects that will actually occur within their sovereign boundaries or nearby. For, as Mr Cowen so aptly points out, even such an apparently “global” feature as sea-level change effects different coastlines in different ways. And atmospheric climate hazards are even more regionalized in their occurrence.
I have developed this point into what I term a needed Plan B for setting policy on climate change, for it has long been self-evident that Plan A (trying to “stop” climate change by reducing human carbon dioxide emissions) is dead in the water.
Plan A hasn’t worked (Kyoto), won’t work (early mover countries on carbon dioxide taxation, like Norway, having discovered that at acceptable initial tax levels of around $20-30/tonne, emission levels continue to rise) and can’t work (because every incremental increase in carbon dioxide causes a diminishing, and at present levels diminishingly tiny, amount of warming).
A more detailed account of Plan B can be read at:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/4/a-new-policy-direction-for-climate-change
Bob Carter