As I write this blog (early February), California is experiencing yet another period of exceptionally destructive flooding from yet another “atmospheric river.” El Niño (a warm water cycle which causes the Pacific jet stream to move south of its neutral position) and La Niña (where trade winds are even stronger than usual, pushing more warm water toward Asia, which, off the west coast of the Americas, causes upwelling increases, bringing cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface) are normal (usually a year or longer) disruptions to the Pacific jet stream. Climate change skeptics (virtually never trained scientists) often blame the hallmarks of climate change on these two variables.
Indeed, we are currently in an El Niño cycle, when the eastern Pacific Ocean is warmer than normal, and NOAA tells us atmospheric rivers are more likely to impact the western U.S. So, we have atmospheric rivers assaulting the west coast now. What climate change does to those atmospheric rivers is the bigger problem. Warmer Pacific temperatures today simply intensify those atmospheric rivers, increasing their frequency by absorbing that hotter water vapor into the river. And as that greater volume of water accumulates in the atmosphere, the river not only grows larger, but the extra weight also slows it down. So, rivers are larger and hover over land longer as they drop their precipitation with extraordinary ferocity.
Climate change has also resulted in years of drying out much of the western landscape, often creating a hardened surface that holds water (causing run-off/flooding) as opposed to absorbing it. Decades of over-pumping groundwater has also collapsed those below-surface pockets where water used to be held in wells and aquifers. Thus, even where absorption is possible, there is less natural space to store that overflow. How big is a significant atmospheric river? One such river can hold as much water as five full Mississippi Rivers… stretching 2,000 miles.
I used the above current reality, well documented in news footage, to illustrate one relatively tiny impact of climate change. For those who live in other parts of the United States, their problems with flooding and atmospheric destruction emanate in the form of hurricanes and tornados. And as sea-rise results from melting glacial and polar ice, we get the added impact of coastal storm surges and unending erosion. And that’s just the United States. That’s why this impact is “tiny” when compared to the overall global devastation of climate change.
After much international haggling, in “2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report on the 1.5-degree Celsius [2.7-degree Fahrenheit] threshold that outlined a number of potential futures based on different levels of emissions reductions and subsequent warming… The benchmark is significant. In 2015, the United States was among 195 nations that signed the landmark Paris agreement, an international treaty drafted in response to the worsening threat of climate change…
“In one middle-of-the-road scenario, delayed action around emissions leads the planet to experience a warmer decade in the 2020s before peaking at 2 degrees Celsius of warming around the middle of the century. The warming then begins to decrease due to improved global efforts and technology… In that world, deadly heat waves would strike major cities such as Chicago, while droughts would plague southern Europe, southern Africa and the Amazon, the IPCC report says. The destruction of key ecosystems including coral reefs, tropical forests, mangroves and sea grass beds would lead to reduced levels of coastal defense from storms, winds and waves, and Asia and other places would experience major flooding.
“That scenario also predicts that steadily rising sea levels, increased water stress and declining crop yields would put pressure on global food prices and lead to prolonged famines in some African countries. The world would also see increasing levels of public unrest and political destabilization, the report says.
“Such possibilities illuminate the need for urgent action, as well as the consequences of a half-degree Celsius increase from 1.5 to 2 degrees of warming. For example, about 75% of the world’s coral reefs are expected to be lost at 1.5 degrees of warming, versus 99% at 2 degrees, [Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists] said… [If climate temperatures climb] to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, 75% of all coral reefs are expected to be lost. With a 2-degree rise, 99% would perish.” Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times, February 1st.
We’re not at those arbitrary thresholds yet, but projections suggest that unless we mend our ways, we will hit those numbers around 2030. And even though we seem to have a little more time, look at the searing heat waves, rising diseases carried by insects escaping the heat, flooding as well as desertification, wildfires and coastal erosion we have already experienced as “100-year” and “1000-year” catastrophes have become the new normal.
Among those in the know, few experts believe we can stay below those internationally agreed disastrous average temperatures. “To do so, she said, would necessitate a more than 40% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030… ‘That requires a pace of emissions reductions that’s really inconsistent with what we see on the planet to date,’ Dahl said. ‘At the same time, it’s really important that we continue to strive for that goal, even if we know we’re not going to make it.’
“Critically, the limit set under the Paris agreement is not about a single day, month or even year of warming, Dahl said. Rather, it refers to sustained warming over two or three decades. (The agreement does not specify a time frame, and has been interpreted differently by different scientists.)” LA Times. But all experts agree that we face existential threats, misery and disease, deaths and destruction into the tens of trillions of dollars in the foreseeable future… unless…
I’m Peter Dekom, and the next time you vote, ask yourself if you really want to cast your ballot for a candidate who wants to de-regulate greenhouse gas emissions, cut incentives for alternative energy and eliminate infrastructure investments against climate change.
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