A home is destroyed by beach erosion in the the Alaskan village of Shishmaref in 2006. Temperatures in the village has risen over the last 30 years, causing a reduction in sea ice and permafrost along the coast, making the shoreline vulnerable to erosion.
(GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images/FILE)Photos (1 of 1)
Global warming affecting every corner of the US, report says
The federal report comes as Congress is contemplating ways to combat climate change.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer/ June 16, 2009 edition
In Alaska, the permafrost is thawing. In the Southwest, the annual rainfall has been decreasing. And seasonal ice cover on the Great Lakes has been declining on average.
No corner of the US has been untouched by global warming. And the effects are expected to tighten their grip over the course of this century, according to a new report from the federal Global Change Research Program released Tuesday.
How tight that grip gets depends on trends in greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities – ranging from burning fossil fuels to deforestation. Unlike previous US assessments, this one includes projections based on a high emission scenario and a low emission scenario. These comparisons underscore how the pace of climate change slows and the overall effects weaken if countries can apply the brakes to greenhouse-gas emissions, largely carbon dioxide. And its regional projections come with a somewhat higher confidence levels than did those in past reports.
While the congressionally-mandated report contains no new research results, specialists say, it is built on research that has been vetted over a decade by the broader community of scientists working in the relevant fields.
The report comes as legislation aimed at reducing US greenhouse-gas emissions is moving through Congress, notes Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group based in Cambridge, Mass., that actively pushes for greenhouse-gas reductions.
Most science reports deal with global-scale changes, he says. That tends to keep the issue remote from any one individual’s experience, especially when millions of Americans already are coping with the current, deep recession.
The focus on regions within the US, to the extent the state of climate science allows it, “and most importantly having it messaged by the federal government have the potential to build a national conversation about what’s at stake,” Dr. Frumhoff says.
The report, updating a similar volume that federal agencies produced in 2000, was written by 28 scientists, 16 from US government labs and the rest from leading US universities.
Warming during the 21st century is expected to rise by 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit in much of the country, compared with a 1.5 degree increase during the 20th century. The range reflects uncertainties about the path emissions will take and how sensitive the climate system is to changes in greenhouse-gas levels.
The report notes several shifts in natural systems that have already taken place. Water and air temperatures have increased on average, with the some of the largest temperature increases coming during winters in the Midwest and northern Plains states. In those places, average winter air temperatures have risen by more than 7 degrees F. over the past 30 years.
Heavy downpours have become more frequent and more intense across most of the country. Winter snow pack, Arctic sea ice, and river ice are declining. Meanwhile, in many areas the growing season is getting longer.
Looking at economic sectors, the report notes that some electric utilities that rely on nuclear energy or coal have occasionally imposed cuts in power generation over the past several years because rivers that supply cooling water are too warm. The water can’t cool the plants and still meet environmental regulations for the temperature of cooling water being returned to the rivers.
Looking ahead, the report describes a future in which the intensity of hurricanes is likely to increase (though not necessarily the number or the number striking land). Sea level continues to rise – with levels at any one spot affected by both local conditions and by a general increase from melting glaciers and ice atop Greenland and Antarctica. And droughts intensify in the US Southwest and Southeast.
These effects can be blunted, the report notes, by combining emissions reductions with adaptation measures – ranging from Boston’s Deer Island Sewage Treatment plant to planning new roads in Micronesia in anticipation of sea level rise and increased rainfall.
Comments
2. Roger | 06.16.09
Pure poppycock! This propaganda is just more leftist alarmism, not science at all. The contrived nonsense is to help implement some plan, although I’m not sure what exactly that is. These cycles are natural, and not caused by humans. They have been occurring for millions of years. Our current warm period won’t last forever, and it is not extraordinary - it is within the bounds of natural climate variation.
3. James Kalafus | 06.16.09
1.Thunderstorms that dump several inches of rain in a short time give water that largely runs off of the land taking soil (and seeds ) with it. This is exacerbated by the decreased ability of drought hardened soil to absorb water. I have corn and soybean fields behind my house and I have seen this resulting erosion with my own eyes. Declining yields and abandoned farmlands will follow 2. Milder winters allow for more insects to survive and to breed. Add increased stress from drought and situations such as the pine beetle destruction of western pine forests become more common.
3. Northern growing regions increase but will be more then offset by the loss of what is the southern growing area.
4. D Raynee | 06.16.09
2008 proved to be coldest of the past 10 years as reported by NASA. About 20 years ago the covers or major weekly magazines were about the impending return of ice age. What would we do if we finally discovered that global temperature actually follows a greater cycle of warming and cooling - that the previous ice age did not come about nor did it end because of human actions(emissions).
5. james Kelly | 06.16.09
Some people believe in “****” but I guess it doesn’t matter -it’s coming to us!
6. Steven | 06.16.09
Dear Jonathan,
Does the picture at the top not mean anything to you? Do you really think that a more temperate winter and higher water levels are good things? Your irony is childish.
7. elmer | 06.16.09
Dear Steven,
The ocean is receding in Boston.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/16/the-rubbish-is-coming-one-if-by-land-two-if-by-sea/
and Alaska
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/science/earth/18juneau.html
8. Sailrunner | 06.16.09
Jonathan and Roger,
Before making broad, generalized, points, please do your homework. Look at who backs what studies - follow the money - and you may have a different perspective.
Religion and politics may be places where belief matters. We are in a time of threat to our spaceship and evidence is more important. Attention to systems is crucial.
One source: http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/evidence/
Attend an “Awakening the Dreamer” symposium
Some facts: 50% ozone - lost in last 50 years, 90%large fish - gone from ocean,30% arable land - lost in last 40 years, 70% forests - gone, It takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of food, oil supplies are past their peak, demand is rising rapidly,
These are indicators.
9. Steven | 06.16.09
Elmer, did you even read those articles?? The ocean is not receding in Boston. It is rising.
And I don’t know what point you’re trying to make with Alaska. Honestly did you even read the first paragraph? The only reason the ocean is “receding” is because the glaciers are melting.
Let me help you out, I wouldn’t want you to suffer through a whole article that you used as an argument.
“The geology is complex, but it boils down to this: Relieved of billions of tons of glacial weight, the land has risen much as a cushion regains its shape after someone gets up from a couch.” And this has negative implications anyway, because the wetlands will die, and streams will dry up.
If you’re still reading, I would love to know what point you’re trying to make
10. John | 06.16.09
I wonder how long the house sat in it’s simple wonder waiting to fall over the tide driven eclipse. I understand poverty however I do too understand determination - which seems to be lack thereof.
11. Chris | 06.16.09
Dear Everyone,
this is my last will and testament. Global Warming is melting my keyboard an…
12. James Kalafus | 06.16.09
It seems that the deniers bring up the same and discredited arguments again and again.
1,
From RealClimate.org , Dec 16,2008:
“This puts 2008 at #9 (or #8) in the yearly rankings, but given the uncertainty the real ranking could be anywhere between #6 or #15. More robustly, the most recent 5-year averages are all significantly higher than any in the last century. The last decade is by far the warmest decade globally in the record.”
2. That global cooling consensus in the 70’s is a myth.
From USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm
“Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.
The study reports, “There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.
“A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales.”
3.
The ocean’s receding in Alaska because the melting glaciers are relieving pressure on the earth there so that in those areas the land rises faster then the ocean.
13. Aaron | 06.16.09
There is NO such thing as Global Warming: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=114
14. jim | 06.16.09
People can adapt to changing conditions. Raise goats in drouthy areas and start raising corn in wetter places. If your house falls in the ocean…maybe you shouldn’t build the next one in a risky area. People can adapt to changing weather, but we could loose a lot of productivity if we spend huge amounts of money to try to stop the earth from spinning. I don’t want my tax dollars wasted on Gore’s plan. If a few people starve to death, that is all a part of gods plan. If there are too many rabbits….they die. Too many dinosaurs…they die. If there are too many caring save the earth people….money gets wasted. God told me so….gee I must be the new prophet!!! Throw your bible in the dumpster. A new age has arrived.
15. Phil | 06.16.09
Elmer -
Your first source is cherrypicking. Coastal New England is still rising in elevation — rebounding after being weighted down by massive amounts of ice during the last glaciation. Boston has also employed dredging and landfill to encroach upon its harbor. Neither of these factors have any relationship to the ongoing measurable rise in sea levels globally.
And if you had bothered to actually read your second source, you would have seen the same primary cause: melting glaciers allowing the earth’s crust to rise upwards.
Cherrypicking and misquoting sources are classic AGW denial strategies. The facts continue to pile up, but you just find more and more desperate arguments to try and explain them away.
16. Scott | 06.17.09
I reviewed elmer’s two links.
1. The Boston link says that sea levels have risen constantly in the last 100 years in Boston, but have been more than offset by filling in shallow areas in the bay around the city in order to expand the area available for urban development.
2. The Alaska link says that “as nowhere else in the world” the land around Juneau is actually rising higher because as Glaciers are melting, and the weight of the ice is lost, the land is rebounding faster than the sea level is rising (for now).
I find no reference in either linked article to the idea the ocean is receding.
17. andy123 | 06.17.09
It is stunning that the science based report prepared by a San Francisco PR firm does not recognize that there are different science views out there and this is not slam dunk truth. These are linear extrapolations of the future that are worst case scenarios intended to scare people into action. Models are valuable in the sense that they provide a way to project various scenarios into the future, but they are just that, projections. There is no evidence that human contributions to climate change are responsible for the projected climate change, in fact the science on that is very much in the process of being developed and the evidence is simply not there. Not a single positive benefit to climate change? All the outcomes are negatove for the entire country? Something is wrong with this picture, something unreal…..
18. Audeamus | 06.17.09
The data, based on scientific observation, not wishful thinking, are that the polar regions are undergoing significant changes much faster than the temperate and equatorial regions from global warming. The deniers may think that longer growing seasons in the temperate areas is a good thing, but the elimination of the snowpack and glaciers that provide fresh water for literally billions in the Americas and Asia is not, and neither is the effects on insect populations.
Something must be done to control carbon emissions. My family and I are willing to play our part, and to pay a carbon tax.
19. giles slade | 06.17.09
Wow, I’m stunned by the intensity of the controversy expressed in these comments. There is NO DOUBT that climate change is happening around us now. State Birds can no longer be found in their original ranges. The ecozone maps of the Department of Agriculture are obsolete since they depend on information gathered before 1986. Spring is coming sooner, hence the enormous yearly floods. Snowmelt is ending sooner and this results both in droughts that now trouble 13 states and in enormous forest fires earlier and earlier every year. The hotter temperatures of spring and summer result in more extreme storms -twisters and hurricanes- that batter our infrastructure. Hotter temps also mean that tropical diseases are now moving north from Mexico into border regions like Texas. Surely, since you obviously read newspapers some of you have read about some of these things. This is not a conspiracy intended to deceive you. In fact, any deception that has taken place has been the skillful mismanagement and disinformation of climate change information which is deliberately calculated to sustain business as usual. [See James Hoggan’s forthcoming book CLIMATE COVER-UP] From media reports every day now, you are receiving advance warning of the dire changes that are coming down the pipe in the near future for all of us right here in North America. Even if you doubt the veracity of all these reports but still have children or loved ones, it is your responsibility to listen to them attentively and to decide what it will take to convince you that climate change is real and THEN what you will do to protect yourself and your family if and when they turn out to be true.
20. reed clay | 06.17.09
what a narrow mind it is to refute all the massive data… global warming is here! just because there might have been a cold winter does not rebuke the fact that temps are on the rise. the only question has been if it is human created;those whom question whether humans can cause destruction by impacting the environment need only to pick up a book on the sand storms in the dust bowl . it has been proven it was a man-made disaster
21. bLaKcEo | 06.17.09
Why is it so difficult for people to just look at the amount of pollution that cars alone put into the atmosphere each day on every road in every city around the world. Add in the factories, homes, businesses and everything else that emits smoke into the atmosphere around the world daily. Now do this for every day since the start of the industrial revolution. Where do you think this pollution goes? Does the wind just blow it away. Does it escape into space? No - and a resounding no. We are so stuck on the so-called 2 party system that anything prosposed by the right is immediately opposed/denied by the left and vice-versa. It is not rocket science. Yes, everyone has policital motivations but common sense should motivate even the least educated to see what happening right before their eyes. If you fill a balloon with smoke - where does it go? Nowhere. China brings new coal-fired mines and factories online weekly. Think of the non-regulatation of emissions in the majority of countries worldwide. We may not fully understand how much we actually pollute but do not just assume that because we are not covered in ash and soot that it all just gets absorbed into the ocean.
22. woodsonian | 06.17.09
When press coverage and media time are given based on the number of scientist who think warming is actually happening and is a danger to mankind vrs those who think it is a fraud we will see and hear something different. The debate will virtually end because the no warming crowd will not be heard very often. The fact that a few get equal footing is the real story. Their viewpoint deserves to be heard, debated but also equated to a reality factor. Flat earth, no moon landing, no evolutionist I am so sorry but your “Warhol” five minutes is up!
23. iam | 06.17.09
What are we going to do with these conservative nutcakes? What, and the moonshot was a hoax? What the **** are you people doing with your lives? Are not facts important to conservatives or is ideology your only marker?
24. elmer | 06.17.09
Stephen, in both instances there is more land not less. Talk about Cherrypicking this very article is showing one instance of a house caving in and they don’t blame it on rising sea levels but just plane old erosion.
25. SKV_USA | 06.17.09
While most of these facts are true. They are used to mislead general public. The amount of CO2 & the rest greenhouse gases released by humans on the raise. But all human made green gases combined are just small fraction ~2% of greenhouse gases released by nature. Fluctuation in greenhouse gases release by volcanoes by far bigger than what humans release.
No question that climate is changing, historical records of last 2000 yrs and Research of last 4,000,000,000 yrs show that natural fluctuations in climate are well above what we are experiencing today.
We have to switch to green energy but don’t expect see any effect on climate.
26. Steve J. | 06.17.09
Steven, beach re-nourishment projects have happened all over the coastlines of America for decades and for this reason. Coastlines erode. It has nothing to do with global warming (as if a single picture can tell the whole story). The projects tend to get more backing when it’s expensive high-rise apartments, condos and hotels, and not manufactured homes.
27. Geezer Citizen | 06.17.09
Can those who deny human origin for global warming (global climate meltdown is a more accurate appelation)—can they prove that there is no such human origin? No. They cannot.
The circumstantial evidence for it warrants grave concern. Thoreau observed, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when we find a trout in the milk.”
29. Stacy | 06.17.09
Sadly, it’s likely the tipping point may have already passed. My household certainly tries to “walk lightly”, but I’m not sure it will matter in the long run. The earth is a big place, and there is a lag period (50 years?) for the massive anount of CO2 we’ve dumped and any discernable effects. Now that the effects have started, it’s like a giant boulder rolling down the hill. The argument of whether it will help to push the boulder down the hill with less force (but continue to push, nonetheless) seems a little silly.
I’m glad I didn’t have kids; the next generation will have a hellish time.
30. Stacy | 06.17.09
Wow, Christian Science Monitor!
My comment didn’t violate any of your rules to any extent, and was perfectly sane and respectful.
Yet, you removed it, as I’m sure you will this one. Could it be you simply didn’t like what I said?
I am writing this followup to let you know that I noticed, and my opinion of your publication just went down significantly.
31. Steven | 06.17.09
Elmer. I’m speechless. I honestly don’t know if you still haven’t read your own articles or if you are straight lying. Either way you are wrong. According to the graph in your Boston article, levels have been rising for a while, this particular city just has an effective way of dealing with it. In Alaska, the only reason there is more land is because glaciers are melting, which apparently you’ve ignored.
This article does put the blame for the beach erosion on global warming, it just takes a little brain power to figure it out. Let me aid. In the picture’s caption it says
“Temperatures in the village has risen over the last 30 years, causing a reduction in sea ice and permafrost along the coast, making the shoreline vulnerable to erosion.”
Therefore the shore was made so vulnerable to erosion because global warming has melted stuff that was protecting the coast before. It’s not JUST erosion in this case.
32. Data Don - Medford, NJ | 06.18.09
t’s been 60 years since there was snowfall in western North Dakota in June. According to reports, that record has finally been broken and it snowed in Bismarck.
According to KXMC, “National Weather Service meteorologist Janine Vining in Bismarck says there were unofficial reports of a couple of inches of snow in Dickinson on Saturday. Vining says snow in North Dakota in June is uncommon, though it’s not unheard of. She says other parts of the state have seen June snow within the past 10 years.”
33. James Herriman | 06.18.09
The Earth is 1/3 land. We occupy approximately 6% of the available land. That means that we occupy approximately 2% of the entire planet. So our output of carbon dioxide has a 50 to 1 dilution factor. Volcanic activity dwarfs any contribution we make to the atmosphere. Another one of nature’s powerful contributors is the 11 year Sun cycle. Right now the Sun spots are extremely low indicating a cooling trend. The last 10 years we have been cool down. It is somewhat difficult to support the notion that we will experience a 2 to 11.5 degree rise in temperature stated in the executive summary. Also my pet peeve is why are the 31,000 scientist in the climatology field who signed the Oregon Institute of Medicine petition against Global Warming being ignored?
Sincerely, Jim Herriman
35. dizizcameron | 06.18.09
so what have we got?
a bunch of people saying every accredited science article about global warming is an “eco conspiracy” and essentially shouting Nuh UH! at the problem. and other people trying to argue back at them with articles and papers that the people in group 1 clearly aren’t even reading. its true that we don’t see the full picture here, and geologic cycles are at play, and not all of the warming we’re seeing is necessarily caused by use but…who cares? its warming whether its our fault or not, and the consequences are bad for us. we know a way to slow this warming by changing our own behavior.
its completely true that the planet has been this warm befroe thru no act of human kind. but the ice caps didn’t exist then…and neither did any human beings for that matter.
we should stop trying to convince people who don’t want to believe anything besides what they already thing, and just get on with changing the world without them.
36. Steven | 06.18.09
Haha. Elmer. um. yes. let. me. quote. it. for. you.
“Sea level continues to rise – with levels at any one spot affected by both local conditions and by a general increase from melting glaciers and ice atop Greenland and Antarctica.”
37. Candace | 06.30.09
I don’t think that there is person on the planet who will disagree that there is global warming happening. However, no one can claim that it is the result of man. And for those who believe that we can throw money at it and alter this process, I only have this to say….you ego astounds me.
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1. Jonathan | 06.16.09
“Heavy downpours have become more frequent and more intense across most of the country. Winter snow pack, Arctic sea ice, and river ice are declining. Meanwhile, in many areas the growing season is getting longer.”
Lord save us. Increased rainfall (though, apparently, concurrent with increased drought, which is truly wondrous), opened up sea and inland waterway lanes in the winter, more temperate winters, and longer growing seasons and northern expansions of growing ranges- how is North America going to cope with such an awful fate?