Group items tagged

POQUOSON -- Hurricane Isabel flooded Sandy Firman's house in 2003, and now routine storms drive water into the roads and marshes close by. Several homes in this low-lying city, including Firman's, have been elevated about 10 feet to keep them above the ever-closer waters. "We used to not have it like that," said Firman, who has lived in Poquoson all of his 46 years. "But something has changed around here." One big thing that has changed is the sea level, which is rising -- an increase blamed on global warming.

In southeastern Virginia, the rising sea is a problem now, and scientists expect it to get much, much worse.

During the last ice age thousands of years ago, the weight of glaciers pushed down land in what is now the northern U.S. When those glaciers receded, that northern land began to rise, and land here started sinking, as if Virginia were on the end of a see-saw after the other rider got off. Throughout most of the 20th century, the sea level in southeastern Virginia rose about twelve-hundredths of an inch a year -- or 12 inches per century. But over the past two decades or so, the rate appears to have doubled in places. About half of that increase seems to be due to the sinking of land, and half to global warming, said Carl Hershner, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. "And the forecast -- this is the scary part -- is for that acceleration to rise," Hershner said. Scientists say the future increases will be caused almost entirely by climate change. "We will still be sinking," Hershner said, "but that will be a smaller and smaller fraction of the change we experience."

In their overview of shifting climate in the region, Overpeck and Udall cite published findings of prevalent signs of change: rising temperatures, earlier snowmelt, northward-shifting winter storms, increasing precipitation intensity and flooding, record-setting drought, plummeting Colorado River reservoir storage, widespread vegetation mortality and more large wildfires. "The West, and especially the Southwest, is leading the nation in climate change – warming, drying, less late-winter snowpack and drought – as well as the impacts of this change," said Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences and co-director of the Institute of the Environment. In the past 10 years, temperatures in almost all areas in western North America have surpassed the 20th century average, many by more than 1 or even 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming has decreased late-season snowpack, which serves as a water reservoir, as well as the annual flow of the Colorado River, the researchers said.

Those reductions, combined with the worst drought observed since 1900, haven't helped matters; water storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, the largest southwestern water reservoirs, fell nearly 50 percent between 1999 and 2004 and has not risen significantly since.

In addition to water, vegetation is feeling the effects of climate change. Work by UA's David Breshears and colleagues have already showed that more than 1 million hectares of piñon pine have died in the Southwest in the last few decades from a lethal combination of record-high temperatures and uncommonly severe drought. In addition, the frequency of large wildfires has increased as snowpack has decreased.

Add this one to the year’s lengthening list of natural disasters — a bumper crop of poison ivy. It’s flourishing this summer, which, The Wall Street Journal says, “is shaping up to be one of its most virulent and unpredictable seasons.”

Long term, it seems that poison ivy responds positively to global warming, especially the increase in carbon dioxide, which produces bigger and more irritating plants.

The eastern U.S. cooked for another day Wednesday as unrelenting heat again sent thermometers past 100 degrees in urban "heat islands," buckled roads, slowed trains and pushed utilities toward the limit of the electrical grid's capacity.

Records fall again in East as heat swelters on

Philadelphia hit 100 degrees for second straight day, breaking a record of 98 degrees set in 1999. Baltimore hit 100 for the third straight day and Newark, N.J., hit triple digits for the fourth straight day. New York's Central Park was at 99 degrees at 2 p.m.

Turbulent weather blows into the Southwest

According to many scientists, our atmospheric system is in such a “hydrologic cycle” with water, vapor and energy responding to the increase in heat from the Earth just like a pot of water on the stove. And this boiling point has made for increasingly windy years around the Four Corners

“Climate models indicate that global warming could be responsible for our colder temperatures and blustery days,” said Chris Fox, former Environmental Sciences professor at the University of Maryland. Fox has been studying weather for more than 20 years and spent last summer in the Durango area. Fox predicted five years ago that the “next big factor we’d be dealing with would be the wind after observing changes and “connecting the dots.”

Last winter's big snowfall and cold temperatures in the eastern United States and Europe were likely caused by the loss of Arctic sea ice, researchers concluded at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference in Norway last week.Climate change has warmed the entire Arctic region, melting 2.5 million square kilometres of sea ice, and that, paradoxically, is producing colder and snowier winters for Europe, Asia and parts of North America. "The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic," said James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States. "In future, cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception" in these regions, Overland told IPS.

Temperatures in January were -2C over the water, while the land was -25C, making conditions far windier and producing more snowfall than normal. Heavy snow on the remaining ice insulates it from the cold air, preventing it from thickening during the long winter.

This huge mass of warmer air over the Arctic in the late fall not only generates more wind and snow locally, several studies have now documented the impacts on global weather patterns. The winter of 2005-6 was the coldest in 50 years in Japan and eastern Eurasia, reported Meiji Honda, a senior scientist with the Climate Diagnosis Group at Japan's Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. Honda's studies show that the air over the Arctic was quite warm in the fall of 2005, which altered normal wind patterns, pushing the jet stream further south and bringing arctic cold to much of Eurasia and Japan. He also documented the same mechanism for the colder winters of 2007-8 and 2009-10, he told participants. In eastern North America, the same conditions of 2007-8 produced increased precipitation and colder temperatures in the winter. As the sea ice declines, big impacts are likely to be seen in this region, said Sara Strey of the University of Illinois.

Climate Change Is Beginning to Disrupt Agriculture

Climate variability has already affected rains, droughts and temperatures in several parts of the United States, said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "We are already seeing climate change." "We are seeing the expansion of drying," said Rosenzweig, as she brought up a slide showing precipitation measurements across the United States. The measurements, comparing values from 1958 through 2008, showed significant reductions in rainfall across large portions of the Northwest and Southeast. Idaho, Washington, Montana, Georgia and Florida had some of the most drastic changes in rainfall on the map. However, the opposite is not good either, she said, adding that increased soil moisture in some areas could potentially harbor insects and other pests. And, in general, "crops do not like to have their feet wet." Aside from concerns about rainfall, local temperature is also extremely important for crop performance. The reproductive development in many important grains is a process sensitive to temperature, said Paul Gepts, a professor of agronomy at the University of California, Davis. Some plants need cold winters One of the potential side effects of climate change is a trend toward milder winters in some regions. Vital plants, Gepts said, require a cold winter in order to properly develop their seeds for the next season. Rosenzweig agreed. Heat waves, at odd times of the year, affect the proper development of proteins within corn kernels, she said. "It is like scrambling eggs." Gepts also presented a number of well-known strategies for mitigating some of the possible economic effects of climate change on agriculture. Aside from breeding plants to be more drought-, heat- and pest-resistant, he also suggested varying the types of crops maintained on a particular site on the basis of environmental suitability.

The study, which looked at the number of very hot days in 53 U.S. metro area between 1956 and 2005, says the number of very hot days is on the rise globally, but the rate of increase is more than double in the most sprawling regions compared with more compact cities. This was true regardless of the urban regions’ climate zone, population size or rate of growth. The annual number of very hot days increased by 14.8 days on average in the regions with the most sprawl and by 5.6 days in the least sprawling cities, according to the study.

Between 1992 and 2001, the rate of deforestation in the most sprawling regions was more than double that of compact regions, the study noted. Other studies have shown that the loss of vegetative cover is one of the main reasons that cities become much hotter than surrounding areas.

undra fire burned 1,000 square miles of an area near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, three years ago that showed no prior evidence of burning going back thousands of years. Inuits, indigenous people of the Arctic, "never had a word in their language for thunderstorms," said Bob Corell, of the Arlington, Va.-based Global Environment & Technology Foundation. "And a thunderstorm was most likely to blame for that fire."

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States

"Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States," says Gerald Meehl, the lead author and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting."

If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even. Instead, for the period from January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009, the continental United States set 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows, as the country experienced unusually mild winter weather and intense summer heat waves. A record daily high means that temperatures were warmer on a given day than on that same date throughout a weather station's history.

With torrential rains and record flooding hitting the Nashville area, Tennesseans are getting a first-hand glimpse of the future due to climate change. While individual storms can be driven by a number of factors, more frequent and heavy rains are one of the impacts of climate change that people are already experiencing in many areas of the United States. “While major storms are expected this time of year in the U.S. Southeast, global warming contributes to higher air and sea temperatures that in turn promote increased moisture in the atmosphere and more intense rainfall events,” said Dr. Kevin Trenberth, Head of the Climate Analysis Division at the National Center on Atmospheric Research.  “Any resulting flooding has a direct consequence on people’s well-being and livelihood.  Unless we address the root causes of climate change, we are likely to see more of these extreme storms in our future.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently reported that the southeastern United States has witnessed a 20 percent increase in heavy precipitation from 1958-2007, which is driven by climate change.

Four days after rainstorms pummeled my hometown, problems mount. Major portions of the city are still submerged beneath floodwaters. Thousands are displaced from their homes, the contents of their lives soaked, mud-caked and molding. Thousands more have no electricity or plumbing. The city faces severe drinking water shortages, with several water treatment facilities paralyzed.

in the coming months, as Nashvillians reflect on this shock, we may conclude that we've gotten a firsthand glimpse of the symptoms of a warming planet.

the unprecedented intensity of this storm -- which produced the largest volume of rainfall from a single storm on record in the state of Tennessee -- is closely tied to warming climate trends.