Image courtesy of USA Today
As of January, 2204– Our Climate Future Has Arrived and it is Boiling
In November, 2023, the U.S. government released its fifth National Climate Assessment, which documents the federal assessment of the impacts of climate change on this country, its residents and businesses.
We are a few weeks from getting the planet’s December statistics, but already the data reveals 2023 was the hottest year on record. This was a year that U.N. General Secretary António Guterres labeled as “global boiling”. It just surpassed the 1.5 degrees average Celsius temperature rise that the Paris Climate Accord warned would tip the planet unavoidably to irreversible climate damage leading to global warming.
As described by The Washington Post on January 1; “The year included the hottest single day on record (July 6) and the hottest ever month (July), not to mention the hottest June, the hottest August, the hottest September, the hottest October, the hottest November, and probably the hottest December. It included a day, Nov. 17, when global temperatures, for the first time ever, reached 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial levels.”
Findings that Paint a Picture of the Climate Growing More Extreme
We residents of the Arkansas River Valley like to think of ourselves as a place apart – visited by tourists surely, but apart from the hustle and bustle and concrete and heat of major metro areas. But it turns out that none of us are immune from the deepening climate crisis.
The National Climate Assessment is a United States government interagency ongoing effort on climate change science conducted under the auspices of the Global Change Research Act of 1990. Our government issues the report about every five years, the last one in 2018 and now, in 2023.
As Ark Valley Voice has been reporting on for months now, the earth has just completed its warmest year on record, adding to the eight previous record-breaking years. For readers who believe in data trends — this is a trend.
We’re in the northern hemisphere winter. The winter just passed in the southern hemisphere was a full nine degrees above average. That’s not just a canary in a coal mine; it’s an ostrich on our collective cliff.
Already, the reality of a changed winter season is evident. On Christmas Day 2023 in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, it was 53 degrees Fahrenheit and pouring rain. That has never happened before.
We know that climate change is happening four times faster in the Arctic areas than here. But now when snow falls in Colorado, and in this valley, it often is as likely to sublimate into the air as it is to melt.
It is true that the extremes of 2023 might have been made worse by combining with El Niño. This Pacific Ocean warm water phenomenon occurs every four or so years. But added to the heat from human-caused factors and burning fossil fuels, it’s a potent stew.
In fact, some scientists say that the planet isn’t just warming, the warming is accelerating. In a paper published last month, climate scientists led by James E. Hansen present a terrifying theory: that the pace of global warming could increase by 50 percent in the coming decades. With that rapid increase in temperatures, could come an escalation of extreme impacts.
Basically, they argue the planet has an “energy imbalance” with fossil fuels pumping more energy (greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere than is coming out. The result includes a rising number and intensity of extreme weather events.
Extreme Weather is Becoming the Norm
Accepting that climate change is real is more likely to be the result of acknowledging the extreme weather; that climate change is normalizing, than it is accepting the scientific data:
- A steadily rising thermometer documented month-after-month the steady rise in average temperatures, creating weeks-long heat domes over major metro areas and regions. Phoenix, Arizona endured a 31-day heat wave; 31 consecutive days above 110 Fahrenheit, and 600 people died. One NASA atmospheric scientist called it “mind-boggling.”
- Stronger hurricanes intensify faster than ever, going from Category 1 strength to the strongest Category 5 in a matter of hours, making emergency preparations difficult to predict.
- Catastrophic wildfires swept the globe. In Greece, wildfires consumed the country’s national forests and drove thousands of locals and tourists into the sea. In Canada — wildfires consumed an area as large as the country of Greece and blanketed the eastern half of the continental U.S. in smoke and pollution for weeks. In Maui, a sweeping fire began in nonnative grasses and destroyed historic Lahaina Town in a matter of a couple of hours.
- Torrential rainstorms and epic snowstorms boiled up out of nowhere and then stalled out over areas for hours or days. The California Sierra Nevada’s was buried under more than 60 feet of snow last winter, followed by an epic melt that resurrected ancient lake beds and devastated agricultural areas.
- Tornado outbreaks that have moved Tornado Alley further east, now seem to happen at all times of the year, not just springtime.
- A stubborn drought that has plagued the West for 20 years is expanding, depleting the nation’s major river systems across the West and to the Mississippi River basin, where grain barges from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa were halted due to low water levels.
While we think of this in terms of extremes, the National Climate Assessment tells us that Americans should begin to think of this as the economic, social, and civic impacts on our collective future. Just a few impacts:
Communities —
Rising average temperatures are expected to continue to damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities. This could disrupt many areas of life from family incomes to the social underpinnings that aging and deteriorating infrastructure supports. Stressed ecosystems. including rising sea levels are beginning to cause community migration, and reveal the economic inequality of the “haves”, and the “have-nots”.
As the National Climate Assessment concludes: “Climate change is also projected to alter the geographic range and distribution of disease-carrying insects and pests, exposing more people to ticks that carry Lyme disease and mosquitoes that transmit viruses such as Zika, West Nile, and dengue, with varying impacts across regions. Communities in the Southeast, for example, are particularly vulnerable to the combined health impacts from vector-borne disease, heat, and flooding. Extreme weather and climate-related events can have lasting mental health consequences in affected communities, particularly if they result in degradation of livelihoods or community relocation.”
Frankly, climate impacts are not distributed equally. Lower-income and other marginalized populations often live in communities with less shade, fewer financial resources to afford air conditioning or fans, or depend on public transportation. In Chaffee County, and at higher altitudes, the idea of air conditioning was an unnecessary concept until the past few years.
Economic —
Here we see a direct impact on the Central Colorado Rockies: regional economies and industries that depend on natural resources and favorable climate conditions, such as agriculture, tourism, and fisheries, are vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change.
In the Southwest, it’s drought, leading to stressed forest lands, attacked by insect infestations, leading to dead and dying trees, leading to increased wildfire risk.
As the plains have hotter summers and higher humidity, it could help our summer tourism. But accompanying water shortages could directly affect our river sports tourism and a reduced winter snowpack could severely affect our winter sports tourism and wildlife habitat. In general, rising temperatures are projected to reduce the efficiency of power generation while increasing energy demands, resulting in higher electricity costs.
This is the reality even without the looming and continuing crisis of the Colorado River Basin; Chaffee County residents should remember that much of our summer Arkansas river rafting and fishing success is dependent upon river levels supported by the Fry-Ark agreement. It transfers water from the Colorado River Basin to the Arkansas Basin during a key timeframe.
Biodiversity —
Climate change is combining with human activity to threaten the planet’s biodiversity. Not only are humans a cause, through our daily living, our rising demand for food sources, the expansion of our cities, our intensive farming practices threatening the habitats of thousands of species; all these extremes threaten wildlife stability.
Two small local examples of how rising temperatures are reducing habitats even in this valley:
- The boreal toad prefers high-altitude wet habitats (8,000–12,000 ft in elevation) such as lakes, marshes, ponds, bogs and quiet shallow water. As the Western drought continues, that habitat is shrinking.
- The American Pikas live in high mountain ecosystems that are cool and moist. The pika has adapted to life in areas that rarely get above freezing and can overheat and die when exposed to temperatures as mild as 78 degrees Fahrenheit.
Social —
Encroaching sea levels are impacting coastlines from Miami to Houston, to Long Island, causing regular flooding. Recently we learned that U.S. military bases have accepted the climate change data: they are beginning to raise their base infrastructures further above sea level rise.
The floating ice front of the Thwaites Ice sheet in Feb.2019. The collapse of the major ice shelves is expected to cause massive sea level rise. Image courtesy of the University of South Florida.
While few are raising this reality, the rising number of people at the U.S. southern border and moving from Africa into Europe is beginning to include not just political asylum seekers and those fleeing violence in their home countries, but climate refugees.
In some regions of the world, those subsistence farmers and herders who see their wells and their rivers dry up have little choice but to leave what is often their ancestral lands in search of water and food, or starve.
Pacific islanders have been sounding the alarm that rising sea levels are inundating their small island nations. When their countries are gone — where do they go?
No one, it seems, is raising the thought that the extremes of climate could also be contributing to extreme social attitudes and conditions. Ark Valley Voice hasn’t seen any data on this — but as 2024 commences, it’s worth looking at — not as an excuse, but as a side product.
Could this contribute to the attitudes of those so willing to accept calling those fleeing to our borders as “Poisoning the blood of America” and saying they would support mass detention camps and deportations?
The climate experts say we can’t deal with what is coming unless we accept the realities: extreme events, extreme temperatures, a climate predictable only in its unpredictability, and the growing understanding that to save ourselves, we have to save this planet by reducing greenhouse gases.
We may not have much time left.
Tonga volcano eruption sent a huge amount of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. That amount of water vapor has raised the temperature for 2023.