The week in climate change effects happening TODAY
by David Atkins
Climate change isn’t a threat in the far off future. It’s a problem today. Here are a few stories from this week alone:
Extreme, flood-causing rainfall is becoming much likelier in Britain:
Climate change caused by humans has made the likelihood of extreme rainfall similar to that seen in England this winter significantly higher, according to analysis seen by the Guardian.
Rainfall events that would previously have occurred only once in a century are now likely to be witnessed once every eighty years in the south of England, the Oxford University work shows.
That will mean far more frequent severe floods for residents of the crowded region, with what were once extremely rare events now happening much more often than the infrastructure of the region is equipped for. The research shows an increase in the rate of such events of about 20 to 25%, which significantly alters the number of homes likely to be vulnerable to flooding.
Friederike Otto, from the university’s school of geography and the environment, said: “It will never be possible to say that any specific flood was caused by human-induced climate change. We have shown, however, that the odds of getting an extremely wet winter [in the UK] are changing due to man-made climate change. Past greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution have loaded the weather dice so the probability of the south of England experiencing extremely wet winters has increased.”
Tornadoes are getting stronger and more frequent in the midwest United States:
The return of tornado season with a vengeance has people asking again about a possible link to climate change. At the same time, tantalizing new preliminary research finds “some evidence to suggest that tornadoes are, in fact, getting stronger.” I talked to the lead scientist behind that research…
And a September 2013 study from Stanford, “Robust increases in severe thunderstorm environments in response to greenhouse forcing,” points to “a possible increase in the number of days supportive of tornadic storms.” In particular, the study found that sustained global warming will boost the number of days experiencing conditions that produce severe events during spring, representing “an increase of about 40 percent over the eastern U.S. by the late 21st century.”
While many countries are inadequately prepared for climate change’s effects on food supply, it is the world’s poorest and most food-insecure countries that will likely be most affected. Nevertheless, no country’s food system will be unaffected by worsening climate change.
Greater food insecurity could even pose a security threat as competition intensifies for water and arable land. The IPCC Report warns about an “increase in risks of violent conflicts in the form of civil war and intergroup violence”. The decade-long armed conflict in Sudan, the ongoing civil war in Syria and unrest in Egypt are all example of how severe drought, internal migration and economic hardship can lead to devastating instability.
“Battles over water and food will erupt within the next five to 10 years as a result of climate change,” said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim of the IPCC report.
“The water issue is critically related to climate change. People say that carbon is the currency of climate change, water is the teeth. Fights over water and food are going to be the most significant direct impacts of climate change.”
Mount Everest is rapidly becoming unclimbable:
The deadly avalanche on Everest earlier this month wasn’t technically an avalanche. It was an “ice release”—a collapse of a glacial mass known as a serac. Rather than getting swept up by a rush of powdery snow across a slope, the victims fell under the blunt force of house-sized ice blocks tumbling through the Khumbu Icefall, an unavoidable obstacle on the most popular route up Everest. The worst accident in the mountain’s history has effectively ended the 2014 climbing season. And some see global warming as the key culprit.
“I am at Everest Basecamp right now and things are dire because of climate change,” John All, a climber, scientist, and professor of geography at Western Kentucky University, told me by email. “The ice is melting at unprecedented rates and [that] greatly increases the risk to climbers.”
“You could say [that] climate change closed Mt. Everest this year,” he added.
Every year we wait to act is a year in which all of these effects and many more will compound on themselves even further.
America is making rapid progress on most social issues. Economic inequality is a huge problem that is hamstringing entire generations and futures, but it’s a problem of its own day that we can and will solve. But neither of these are how future generations will judge our actions today. We will be judged on what we did about climate change above all else, because it’s the issue that carries by far the most lasting and momentous consequences.
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