Fourth National Climate Assessment Report

[donsutherland1]

Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities. The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future—but the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the changes that will occur. Americans increasingly recognize the risks climate change poses to their everyday lives and livelihoods and are beginning to respond . Water managers in the Colorado River Basin have mobilized users to conserve water in response to ongoing drought intensified by higher temperatures, and an extension program in Nebraska is helping ranchers reduce drought and heat risks to their operations. The state of Hawai‘i is developing management options to promote coral reef recovery from widespread bleaching events caused by warmer waters that threaten tourism, fisheries, and coastal protection from wind and waves. To address higher risks of flooding from heavy rainfall, local governments in southern Louisiana are pooling hazard reduction funds, and cities and states in the Northeast are investing in more resilient water, energy, and transportation infrastructure. In Alaska, a tribal health organization is developing adaptation strategies to address physical and mental health challenges driven by climate change and other environmental changes. As Midwestern farmers adopt new management strategies to reduce erosion and nutrient losses caused by heavier rains, forest managers in the Northwest are developing adaptation strategies in response to wildfire increases that affect human health, water resources, timber production, fish and wildlife, and recreation. After extensive hurricane damage fueled in part by a warmer atmosphere and warmer, higher seas, communities in Texas are considering ways to rebuild more resilient infrastructure. In the U.S. Caribbean, governments are developing new frameworks for storm recovery based on lessons learned from the 2017 hurricane season.

https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/

The report contains regional impacts for those who are interested.

[etudiant]

The various initiatives highlighted seem just common sense responses to current conditions. The 'climate change' driver is not so obvious. 

Separately, the summary speaks of 'actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions'. This is something the US has achieved, in contrast to the various Paris Accord signatories.

Imho, that reduces the value of this document, as it offers neither a rallying point nor a guide to action.

[Save the itchy algae!]

It reads like a political shill.  

[Typhoon Tip]

Any debate of modern industrial-based societies of the world that ultimately roots to Environmental concerns has a fascinating stigma associated with it:

The heat of the vitriol is ultimately driven by the intangible nature of the threat, not really the threat its self.  

To make sense of that paradox think about these statements:

Tell someone a train is coming, they bide time; that same someone actually sees the train? Hell yeah! They'll step off the track with no argument and with the greatest expediency imaginable. 

That is the problem with GW, it has no visible train.

The "specter" of Global Warming and all the intrinsic catastrophic train cars of consequence... they are only now just beginning to measure.  Prior? There really were no, or very few ... certainly not enough actual corporeal forms to shut up those that need to have their mouths closed. All you (the proverbial you..) offer them instead of their present way of life (or chance to find one..) is to abstain from their ability to have that life.  

Think about that...  not going to end well for those attempting to warn of anything that blocks that goal, not when they can't see the train.   And so... the problem with this is there needs to be a new PR campaign that is revolutionary - if Nature isn't kind and gentle enough to do so in smaller doses...  Which (ironically) it is, if we choose to look and heed to the signals... but that's also consistent throughout humanity's history. From Pompeii ignored rumbling, to the ancients warning the future through fictional works like Noah ... the disaster has to happen before people see the virtue of the warning.  

 

 

[donsutherland1]

23 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Any debate of modern industrial-based societies of the world that ultimately roots to Environmental concerns has a fascinating stigma associated with it:

The heat of the vitriol is ultimately driven by the intangible nature of the threat, not really the threat its self.  

To make sense of that paradox think about these statements:

Tell someone a train is coming, they bide time; that same someone actually sees the train? Hell yeah! They'll step off the track with no argument and with the greatest expediency imaginable. 

That is the problem with GW, it has no visible train.

The "specter" of Global Warming and all the intrinsic catastrophic train cars of consequence... they are only now just beginning to measure.  Prior? There really were no, or very few ... certainly not enough actual corporeal forms to shut up those that need to have their mouths closed. All you (the proverbial you..) offer them instead of their present way of life (or chance to find one..) is to abstain from their ability to have that life.  

Think about that...  not going to end well for those attempting to warn of anything that blocks that goal, not when they can't see the train.   And so... the problem with this is there needs to be a new PR campaign that is revolutionary - if Nature isn't kind and gentle enough to do so in smaller doses...  Which (ironically) it is, if we choose to look and heed to the signals... but that's also consistent throughout humanity's history. From Pompeii ignored rumbling, to the ancients warning the future through fictional works like Noah ... the disaster has to happen before people see the virtue of the warning.  

 

 

I agree that the public relations needs to be handled differently. Already, some of the forecast scenarios are beginning to play out. For example, with respect to the Midwest, the report states:

An increase in localized extreme precipitation and storm events can lead to an increase in flooding. River flooding in large rivers like the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri Rivers and their tributaries can flood surface streets and low-lying areas, resulting in drinking water contamination, evacuations, damage to buildings, injury, and death. Flooded buildings can experience mold growth that can trigger asthma attacks and allergies during cleanup efforts...

Select data for Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis provide an illustration of the evolving regional rainfall. They are examples and do not provide an all-inclusive look.

Average Annual Precipitation (30-year moving average):

Chicago:
1970: 34.47”
2018: 37.20” (through 11/26)

Detroit:
1970: 31.39”
2018: 34.09” (through 11/26)

St. Louis:
1970: 35.80”
2018: 40.54” (through 11/26)

% of 20 wettest years occurring 2000-2018 (share of climate record represented by 2000-2018):

Chicago: 35% (12.8%)
Detroit: 25% (13.1%)
St. Louis: 25% (13.1%)

The return time for years with precipitation 2 standard deviations or more above the historical average has also shortened. In other words, exceptionally wet years have become more common statistically.

Average Days with 1” or More Precipitation (30-year moving average):

Chicago:
1970: 7.0 per year
2018: 8.3 per year

Detroit:
1970: 5.3 per year
2018: 5.8 per year

St. Louis:
1970: 8.2 per year
2018: 10.7 per year

 

 

[Sidewinder]

I have lived next to corn and soybean fields for the last fifteen years. The last several years have been just fine, not too wet and not too dry. Our farmers have had very good seasons. In fact the weather overall has been fine. We had a late winter this year which wasn't great, but we didn't get above 100 that I can recall in 2018. The corn was super tall this year. We had one drought season in 2011 or 2012, which was quite similar to one I lived through in 87 or 88.  Other than this drought years ago, and some straight line winds, there has not been a lot of noteworthy crop damaging type weather to speak of where I live. 

It is hard to buy into the report when the section on the midwest where I live doesn't match changes we are supposed to be experiencing already. For the last 25 years we've been pushed into believing polar ice would have been gone years ago but it hasn't happened. That temperature extremes could be so dramatic that it could make this area uninhabitable; hasn't come to fruition. That tornadoes would be bigger and more widespread, when in fact the opposite has occurred. I've not had a good storm chase in Central Indiana for years. That isn't to say that we have not had any tornadoes, we had Henryville and others. But our late 90s and early 2000s had healthier outbreaks. So many slight and moderate risks just end up busting. And then you have climate pushers, such as Al Gore, out there making bank money off such predictions, it does little to further science behind this. Global Warming, now known as Climate Change since the warming wasn't working, has not been noticeable in central Indiana. 

[bdgwx]

18 hours ago, Sidewinder said:

I have lived next to corn and soybean fields for the last fifteen years. The last several years have been just fine, not too wet and not too dry. Our farmers have had very good seasons. In fact the weather overall has been fine. We had a late winter this year which wasn't great, but we didn't get above 100 that I can recall in 2018. The corn was super tall this year. We had one drought season in 2011 or 2012, which was quite similar to one I lived through in 87 or 88.  Other than this drought years ago, and some straight line winds, there has not been a lot of noteworthy crop damaging type weather to speak of where I live. 

It is hard to buy into the report when the section on the midwest where I live doesn't match changes we are supposed to be experiencing already. For the last 25 years we've been pushed into believing polar ice would have been gone years ago but it hasn't happened. That temperature extremes could be so dramatic that it could make this area uninhabitable; hasn't come to fruition. That tornadoes would be bigger and more widespread, when in fact the opposite has occurred. I've not had a good storm chase in Central Indiana for years. That isn't to say that we have not had any tornadoes, we had Henryville and others. But our late 90s and early 2000s had healthier outbreaks. So many slight and moderate risks just end up busting. And then you have climate pushers, such as Al Gore, out there making bank money off such predictions, it does little to further science behind this. Global Warming, now known as Climate Change since the warming wasn't working, has not been noticeable in central Indiana. 

The climate in the midwest is a bit tricky because it is (or at least has been) effected by anthroprogenic forcing agents that are completely unrelated to global warming. Refer to Alter et. al. 2017 for information on how agricultural significantly altered the climate in the midwest.

The scientific consensus has never been that polar ice would be gone by now. In fact, the consensus has actually had an embarrassing history of underestimating Arctic sea ice declines; the region and metric most relevant to this myth. A good illustration of this is IPCC AR3 published in 2001 in section 7.5 where they discuss predictions of the cryosphere. They say "The simulations of ice extent decline over the past 30 years are in good agreement with the observations, lending confidence to the subsequent projections which show a substantial decrease of Arctic sea-ice cover leading to roughly 20% reduction in annual mean Arctic sea-ice extent by the year 2050." and then show computer simulations of the expected trajectories. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to compare these simulations with observations after 2001. 

Also note that "climate change" or at least the slight variant "climatic change" actually predates "global warming" in the scientific literature. And ironically both terms are believed to have had their first appearance as scientific vernacular by the same person, Mitchell, who was a climate scientists publishing research as early as the 1950's. It should also be noted that Swedish and Nobel prize winning chemist Svante Arrhenius had been using phrases like "raising the temperature of the earth's surface" in the context of the greenhouse gas effect and specifically CO2 as early as 1896! Refer to Arrhenius 1896 and Rodhe et. all 1997.

And speaking of Arrhenius...he actually figured out some important concepts in regards to global warming including the water vapor feedback, the more aggressive warming in the polar regions, and the fact that the oceans help mitigate anthroprogenic CO2 forcing by scrubbing out some our CO2 emissions. And this all happened in the 19th century (as in prior to 1900) over 120 years ago and long before modern physics (general relativity and quantum mechanics) became a thing.

[chubbs]

10 hours ago, bdgwx said:

The climate in the midwest is a bit tricky because it is (or at least has been) effected by anthroprogenic forcing agents that are completely unrelated to global warming. Refer to Alter et. al. 2017 for information on how agricultural significantly altered the climate in the midwest.

The scientific consensus has never been that polar ice would be gone by now. In fact, the consensus has actually had an embarrassing history of underestimating Arctic sea ice extents; the region and metric most relevant to this myth. A good illustration of this is IPCC AR3 published in 2001 in section 7.5 where they discuss predictions of the cryosphere. They say "The simulations of ice extent decline over the past 30 years are in good agreement with the observations, lending confidence to the subsequent projections which show a substantial decrease of Arctic sea-ice cover leading to roughly 20% reduction in annual mean Arctic sea-ice extent by the year 2050." and then show computer simulations of the expected trajectories. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to compare these simulations with observations after 2001. 

Also note that "climate change" or at least the slight variant "climatic change" actually predates "global warming" in the scientific literature. And ironically both terms are believed to have had their first appearance as scientific vernacular by the same person, Mitchell, who was a climate scientists publishing research as early as the 1950's. It should also be noted that Swedish and Nobel prize winning chemist Svante Arrhenius had been using phrases like "raising the temperature of the earth's surface" in the context of the greenhouse gas effect and specifically CO2 as early as 1896! Refer to Arrhenius 1896 and Rodhe et. all 1997.

And speaking of Arrhenius...he actually figured out some important concepts in regards to global warming including the water vapor feedback, the more aggressive warming in the polar regions, and the fact that the oceans help mitigate anthroprogenic CO2 forcing by scrubbing out some our CO2 emissions. And this all happened in the 19th century (as in prior to 1900) over 120 years ago and long before modern physics (general relativity and quantum mechanics) became a thing.

Yea the science isn't new. The basics were worked out in the 19'th century and it is not very complex. Funny, greenhouse warming was generally accepted in the 1980s, by republicans and democrats. At that time a number of climate modeling forecasts were made that turned out to be accurate and the theoretical and observational evidence for greenhouse warming is now overwhelming. Yet, in the US there is much more skepticism now than in the 1980s. The media coverage of this report has been horrible. Focusing on the political polarization and not the science.

[Hoosier]

14 hours ago, bdgwx said:

The climate in the midwest is a bit tricky because it is (or at least has been) effected by anthroprogenic forcing agents that are completely unrelated to global warming. Refer to Alter et. al. 2017 for information on how agricultural significantly altered the climate in the midwest.

This is an excellent point.  The land use changes have had noticeable effects. The more extreme heat (100+ degree days) has been harder to come by overall with an exception being in the big drought year of 2012.  If you look at dewpoint trends, you will find an increase in the number of days with dewpoints in the 70s/80s at many of the climate sites.