Climate change and its human impact on the Hudson Valley Region: past, present, and future

Transcription

1 Climate change and its human impact on the Hudson Valley Region: past, present, and future

2 Introduction to Climate Change Dr. Roger Schmidt Retired IBM Fellow Manager, Advanced Thermal Energy Efficiency Lab Chief Engineer of Data Center Energy Efficiency

3 Data Centers Consume 2-3% of WW Electricty September 2015

4 Best Practice Save Energy, Reducing Carbon Footprint September 2015

5 Course Presenters Sept 9 Dr. Roger Schmidt, IBM Fellow Emeritus, Poughkeepsie, NY "Introduction to Climate Change" Sept 16 Dr. Jonathan Lothrop, New York State Museum, Albany, Curator of Archaeology "First Peoples of New York and the Northeast: Climate Change and Culture Change" Sept 30 Prof. Kirsten Menking, Vassar College, Associate Professor of Earth Science "Climate history of the Shawangunk Ridge since the end of the ice age" Oct. 7 Dr. Dorothy Peteet Senior Research Scientist, NASA/GISS &. Senior Research Scientist & Adj. Professor, Columbia Univ From Forest Primeval to Urban Landscape: the Vegetational and Climate History of New York s Watershed as Preserved in Marshes" or When Did the Last Ice Age End in New York-New Jersey and What Was the Environment Like? Oct 14 Dr. Sacha Spector, Scenic Hudson, Director of Conservation Science and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia University Sea Level Rise along the Hudson River: Trends, Projections and Impacts on Our Region" Oct 21 Dr. Robert Feranac New York State Museum, Curator of Mammals & Pleistocene Vertebrate Paleontology "The timing of mammal colonization in New York State after the Last Glacial Maximum" Oct 28 Open for either a panel of several of the presenters above or a second presentation from one of the presenters or someone not on the list above presenting

6 The Next 100,000 years of life on Earth Deep Future By Curt Stager 3 videos of 1, 3, and 12 minutes Mostly NASA and NOAA websites

7 There are several elements that make up the weather and climate of a place. The major of these elements are five: temperature, pressure, wind, humidity, and precipitation What is Climate Change? Climate is the average weather at a given point and time of year, over a long period of time (typically years). We expect the weather to change a lot from day to day, but we expect the climate to remain relatively constant. If climate doesn t remain constant, we call it climate change.

8 Starting Point Fact # 1: Carbon Dioxide (and other greenhouse gases ) trap heat and make the Earth warmer than it would be otherwise

9 Fact # 2: The earth has a natural cycle of heating and cooling resulting in swings in atmospheric CO2

10 How global warming works (about 1 minute U. of California)

11 Fact # 3: Human activity such as burning of fossil fuels(coal, oil, and gas) is rapidly increasing the amount of CO2 in Earth s atmosphere.

12 NASA Global Climate Change Website Next group of charts relate to what NASA has provided on this website plus a few others that I have added

13 1. Global Warming

14 July was Earth s hottest month on record Reported by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency July 2015 was the hottest July on record since records began in The average was F. Bandar Mahshahr, Iran, set on of the world s most extreme heat records on July 31. The air temperature of 115, combined with a dew point of 90 degrees, created a heat index of 165. Reported in USA Today, August 21, 2015

15 2. Warming Oceans The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of degrees Fahrenheit since

16 Warm Blob

17 Measuring Ocean Temperatures (about 3 minutes a NOAA and Smithsonian video)

18 3. Declining Arctic Sea Ice Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum each September. September Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 13.3 percent per decade, relative to the 1981 to 2010 average. This graph shows the average monthly Arctic sea ice extent in September since 1979, derived from satellite observations.

19 4. Shrinking Ice Sheets Data from NASA's Grace satellites show that the land ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland are losing mass. The continent of Antarctica has been losing about 134 billion metric tons of ice per year since 2002, while the Greenland ice sheet has been losing an estimated 287 billion metric tons per year.

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21 5. Glacial Retreat Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.10

22 Introduction of Climate Change - Extreme Ice Loss(showed first 13 minutes 2009 TED Video Oxford, England)

23 Margerie Glacier, Glacier Bay

24 6.Sea Level Rise Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting land ice and the expansion of sea water as it warms. The first chart tracks the change in sea level since 1993 as observed by satellites. The second chart, derived from coastal tide gauge data, shows how much sea level changed from about 1870 to 2000.

25 Sea-level from satellites: 4 cm rise in last 10 years

26 On Wednesday, August 26th, 2015, NASA briefed the press on its intensive research effort into the rate and causes of sea level rise, releasing a suite of new graphics and visualizations showing how precisely the agency is measuring the upward creep of the oceans, currently at a rate of 3.21 millimeters per year.

27 7. Extreme Events The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events.11 July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded for the globe. Global oceans record warm for July; January-July 2015 also record warm

28 US Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Time Series NOAA - National Center for Environmental Information -

29 Probability Warmer Temperatures More Storms More Damage

30 8. Ocean Acidification Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent.12,13 This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year.14,

31 Over 60% of the Earth s reefs are at risk due to climate change. Reefs supply 15 tons of seafood per square km a year.

32 9. Decreased Snow Cover Satellite observations reveal that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and that the snow is melting earlier.16 BOZEMAN, Mont. Warmer spring temperatures since 1980 are causing an estimated 20 percent loss of snow cover across the Rocky Mountains of western North America, according to new research from the U.S. Geological Survey. The new study builds upon a previous USGS snowpack investigation which showed that, until the 1980s, the northern Rocky Mountains experienced large snowpacks when the central and southern Rockies experienced meager ones, and vice versa. Yet, since the 1980s, there have been simultaneous snowpack declines along the entire length of the Rocky Mountains, and unusually severe declines in the north.

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35 10. Length of Growing Season EPA website

36 Saturday, January 24, 2015 The Midwest s climate future: Missouri becomes like Arizona, Chicago becomes like Texas

37 Useful Climate Links on everything related to Climate

38 Sept 16 Dr. Jonathan Lothrop, New York State Museum, Albany, Curator of Archaeology "First Peoples of New York and the Northeast: Climate Change and Culture Change"