Thread for discussing climate change

[Lem]

Last month, If I recall correctly, A-m talked about surfing locations in North Carolina. If that's the location referred to in Res Ipsa's quote of him, then he's wrong about that, too, according to this report. Here's an excerpt:

Rising Oceans Part 1: Sea-level rise is already reshaping North Carolina’s coast
By Charles Duncan |Wilmington
PUBLISHED 12:30 PM ET May. 26, 2021

WILMINGTON, N.C. — Signs of rising sea levels can be dramatic on the North Carolina coast. Stronger storms push storm surge up into oceanfront communities like Ocracoke, breaking records as the sea washes through the dunes, through homes and businesses, making the barrier island almost uninhabitable.

But the day-to-day signs of sea level rise are much more subtle. High tides increasingly creep into waterfront roads like River Street in Wilmington. Salt water slowly seeps into land, killing trees and ruining farmland.

North Carolina is already seeing the effects of sea-level rise along the coast. This three-part online series from Spectrum News 1 will explore what the state is seeing already, what it can expect to see, and what North Carolina’s coastal communities can do about it.

•Sea level is rising on the North Carolina coast, bringing with it beach erosion, higher tides and pushing salt water into areas with fresh groundwater

....“Things are different today than they were 10, 15 years ago,” said Reide Corbett, director of East Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute on Roanoke Island.

"Today, the main driver of sea-level rise is a global phenomenon with warming temperatures, warming ocean, more water making it into the ocean associated with melting glaciers. That’s the big driver today," he said.

North Carolina has 300 miles of ocean shoreline and another 1,200 miles of coastline along bays and inside the barrier islands.

“That 300 miles of oceanfront shoreline is critical, that’s where we're seeing that front line, where we’re seeing a lot of changes on the coast. But we’re also seeing changes right at these marshes, these critical wetlands,” Corbett said.

In northeast North Carolina, the sea is rising at a rate of about 4.5 millimeters each year. In Southport, on the southern end of the state’s coastline, the rate is about 2 millimeters of sea-level rise per year.

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlo ... na-s-coast

[Chap]

Last month, If I recall correctly, A-m talked about surfing locations in North Carolina. If that's the location referred to in Res Ipsa's quote of him, then he's wrong about that, too, according to this report.

On the principle of maximum charity, it is possible that A-m does not notice much change because each year he looks around and says - "Hmm. I can't see a change since last year." But if he was able to see the past ten years' change all at once, it would be obvious to him.

This may be a version of the 'slow frog boiling' effect at work ...

[Lem]

Last month, If I recall correctly, A-m talked about surfing locations in North Carolina. If that's the location referred to in Res Ipsa's quote of him, then he's wrong about that, too, according to this report.

On the principle of maximum charity, it is possible that A-m does not notice much change because each year he looks around and says - "Hmm. I can't see a change since last year." But if he was able to see the past ten years' change all at once, it would be obvious to him.

This may be a version of the 'slow frog boiling' effect at work ...

Good point. On a side note, I think read somewhere recently that for the slow boil to happen, the frog's brain has to be impaired......

[canpakes]

The consequences will be an earth that will be overun with lush, healthy vegetation, providing abundant sources of food. Also, lots of greenery to help absorb all the ""excess"" CO2 you guys keep complaining about.

Lol, no. And you contradicted yourself there, anyway.

So I live on the east coast, could you tell me when all the beach houses where I live will be submerged? I've been surfing and fishing on the same beach for 40 years and nothing has changed so far. Will all the millionaires need to sale these million dollar homes in the next year, ten years, 50 years? I mean, you guys say the scientist can predict what's going to happen in 50 to 100 years, correct?

Glad you asked. Miami will be spending 3.8 billion dollars just to take care of minimal sea level rise of several inches.

It’s certainly not necessary to submerge a structure to ruin it, undermine its foundation, and destroy the local water table with seawater inundation.

[Res Ipsa]

Last month, If I recall correctly, A-m talked about surfing locations in North Carolina. If that's the location referred to in Res Ipsa's quote of him, then he's wrong about that, too, according to this report.

On the principle of maximum charity, it is possible that A-m does not notice much change because each year he looks around and says - "Hmm. I can't see a change since last year." But if he was able to see the past ten years' change all at once, it would be obvious to him.

This may be a version of the 'slow frog boiling' effect at work ...

It’s an effect that’s been labeled “shifting baselines.” The brain tries to normalize what it observes, so it simply incorporates the effects of slow change into what it considers normal. When things like diversity in ecosystems is tracked by generation, we clearly see how each generation has inherited an impoverished earth from the generation that came before. Here’s a nice article that discusses the phenomenon. https://news.mongabay.com/2009/06/provi ... ve-nature/

And no paywall!

[Res Ipsa]

On the principle of maximum charity, it is possible that A-m does not notice much change because each year he looks around and says - "Hmm. I can't see a change since last year." But if he was able to see the past ten years' change all at once, it would be obvious to him.

This may be a version of the 'slow frog boiling' effect at work ...

Good point. On a side note, I think read somewhere recently that for the slow boil to happen, the frog's brain has to be impaired......

Funny how that works. It works only on impaired frogs but on normal humans…

[Res Ipsa]

Last month, If I recall correctly, A-m talked about surfing locations in North Carolina. <snip>

Nice catch, Lem. Here's more on climate change and the North Carolina coast:

Rising Seas and Retreating Shores

As the oceans warm, seawater expands and raises sea level. Melting ice adds more water to the ocean, further raising sea level. Along much of the Atlantic Coast, including parts of North Carolina, the land surface is sinking, so the observed rate of sea level rise relative to the land is greater than the global average rise. Sea level is likely to rise one to four feet in the next century along the coast of North Carolina.

As sea level rises, the lowest dry lands are submerged and become either tidal wetland or open water. Most existing wetlands can create their own land and keep pace with a slowly rising sea. But if sea level rises three feet in the next century, most of the wetlands on the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula are likely to be submerged by the higher water level.

Beaches also erode as sea level rises. A higher water level makes it more likely that storm waters will wash over a barrier island or open new inlets. The United States Geological Survey estimates that the lightly developed Outer Banks between Nags Head and Ocracoke could be broken up by new inlets or lost to erosion if sea level rises two feet by the year 2100. Eroding shores will threaten most coastal towns unless people take measures to halt the erosion.

...

Whether or not storms become more intense, coastal homes and infrastructure will flood more often as sea level rises, because storm surges will become higher as well. Rising sea level is likely to increase flood insurance rates, while more frequent storms could increase the deductible for wind damage in homeowner insurance policies. Many cities, roads, railways, ports, airports, oil and gas facilities, and water supplies in the Southeast are vulnerable to the impacts of storms and sea level rise. People may move from vulnerable coastal communities and stress the infrastructure of the communities that receive them.

Increased rainfall may further exacerbate flooding in some coastal areas. Since 1958, the amount of precipitation during heavy rainstorms has increased by 27 percent in the Southeast, and the trend toward increasingly heavy rainstorms is likely to continue.

https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/s ... nge-nc.pdf

And North Carolina produced it's own report on projected impacts of climate change with recommendations for addressing them just last year:

4.7. Impacts of Climate Change on North Carolina Coastal Water Levels
The impacts of climate change on coastal water levels will be manifest during both fair weather and severe weather conditions.
During fair weather, the effect of RSL rise can be seen as increasing water levels associated with astronomical tides; at high tide, this has created what is commonly referred to as “sunny day” or “nuisance” flooding. This is already well recognized in areas such as Hampton Roads, VA, and Charleston, SC, where a significant population exists close to sea level. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has developed the term “high tide flooding” (HTF), defined as water levels of 1.6–2.1 feet above present Mean Higher High Water (Sweet et al. 2018) and has begun both to track the occurrence of HTF and to predict its future likelihood at locations with known RSL trends along the U.S. coast (Sweet et al. 2019).

Selecting Duck, Beaufort, and Wilmington as representative of the northeastern, central, and southeastern sections of the North Carolina coast, an assessment of HTF since 2000 and predictions of the occurrence frequencies of HTF until 2100 are presented in Figures 4.5, 4.6, and 4.7, assuming global average sea level rise contributions between Intermediate-Low and Intermediate (Table 4.1). (These are roughly equivalent to the SROCC likely global average sea level rise projections under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, respectively.)

As discussed above and indicated in the top panels of these figures, projections of the rise in RSL decrease from north to south and translate into a similar decrease in the predicted number of HTF days from north to south. However, under this range of RSL rise, at all three locations, HTF could occur as often as one out of every two days during the decade from 2050 to 2060 and daily after about 2080. Under higher RSL rise rates, HTF becomes a daily occurrence at all locations with corresponding increases in water depths.

...

Climate change will also affect coastal water levels associated with severe weather events. As was the case with HTF, rising RSL will increase the water level that results from storm surge associated with a given storm event. However, changes in storm characteristics as the climate warms—particularly projections of increasing storm intensity—offer a second means for increasing water level extremes associated with these storms (see Chapter 2, Section 2.5.3). Finally, the potential for increased precipitation (see Chapter 3, Section 3.2.7) provides another source of water in addition to storm surge.
Using realistic scenarios for both RSL (projected increases of 0, 20 cm [0.7 feet], 40 cm [1.3 feet], 60 cm [2.0 feet], 80 cm [2.6 ft], 100 cm [3.3 ft]) and future hurricane characteristics (see below), storm surge was computed for 2010 and for future conditions along the North Carolina coast (Blanton 2012, NCDPS 2014). The southeastern coast is subject to more intense storms than the northeastern coast and therefore experiences higher water levels for the same annual probability of occurrence (Figure 4.8). Increases in water level for a given annual probability of occurrence correspond very closely to RSL rise along the open coast (Figure 4.8), although in estuarine areas, the response becomes more nonlinear when RSL exceeds 1.3 feet (NCDPS 2014, Batten et al. 2015). Water levels having a 0.3% and 1.5% probability of occurring each year in 2010 would have a 10% probability of occurring following a 2.6-foot rise in RSL at Duck, NC, and Wrightsville Beach, NC, respectively. In addition, storm statistics were modified to represent reasonable mid-21st century and end-of-21st-century scenarios by imposing a 10% reduction in overall hurricane frequency and a 40% increase in the frequency of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes for the mid-century scenario and a 20% reduction in overall hurricane frequency and an 80% increase in the frequency of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes for the end-of-century scenario. Water levels in the northeast showed very little effect of changing the storm statistics, while in the southeast a slightly greater effect was observed (Figure 4.9).

...



A more recent study considered the effect of RSL on historical water levels observed along the North Carolina coast and found that under the higher scenario (RCP8.5) after 2050, water levels that currently have a 10% probability of occurring each year would have nearly a 100% probability of occurring each year in Wilmington. Furthermore, water levels that currently have a 1% probability of occurring each year would have nearly a 60% probability of occurring each year from 2050 to 2100 (Kopp et al. 2015).

A third study analyzed the effects of rising sea level and changing tropical cyclone characteristics on water levels in every coastal county along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts under the RCP8.5 scenario (Marsooli et al. 2019). These authors found that the historical (1980–2005) 1% annual probability event along the North Carolina coast would have a corresponding probability of 30%–100% in the time period from 2070 to 2095. Further, it was concluded that the change in annual probability was dominated by sea level rise along the northeastern Atlantic Coast but shifted to being dominated by the changing storm characteristics as one moved south to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the North Carolina coast, sea level rise was approximately twice as important as the shift in storm characteristics in affecting changes in storm related water level (Figure 4.10).
...

Collectively, these findings make it clear that climate change is increasing both routine, sunny- day, and extreme storm-related water levels and thereby exacerbating a range of flood hazards in coastal North Carolina. Unfortunately, the HTF analysis is currently limited to only a few North Carolina locations where long-term tide gauge data are available, and predictions of future storm surge hazards are also available at only limited locations and under limited assumptions. In particular, additional flood hazard studies are greatly needed for the chronically flood-prone areas surrounding the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. Accounting for likely changes to the structure of the North Carolina Outer Banks and the contribution of precipitation and runoff introduces additional levels of complexity to this hazard assessment beyond what has been attempted to date.

The Climate Science Appendix can be found here: https://ncics.org/wp-content/uploads/20 ... er2020.pdf

The Main Report can be found here:https://ncics.org/programs/nccsr/

From the Plain Language Summary:

Increased flooding, due largely to sea level rise, will disrupt coastal and low-lying communities. By the end of the century, these areas will experience high tide flooding nearly every day and a substantial increase in the chance of flooding from coastal storms. The ocean is rising because melting glaciers add more water to the ocean and because sea water increases in volume when it warms. Sea levels are rising faster on the northern coast of North Carolina than on the southern coast, but by the end of the century all of the state’s coast will experience disruptive coastal flooding. Under the higher emissions scenarios, flooding events that are currently rare will become much more likely.

Hurricanes will be wetter and are likely to be more intense, though it is unknown whether the number of hurricanes making landfall in North Carolina will change. Atmospheric water vapor is the fuel for hurricanes. Increased water vapor in a warmer climate will favor hurricanes that are more intense and that will produce more extreme rainfall.

[Chap]

Good posts here!

Seriously, we have to realise that Atlanticmike is just a regular guy, who is trying to tell things the way he sees them. And, given the way he looks at things, he just doesn't see what is really going on.

To do that, you need to gather data long-term and analyse them systematically. That's not what you do if you just go fishing and surfing every summer. Eventually, Atlanticmike's favourite resort will be so damaged by the effects of sea level rise that he will notice. Then, I presume, he will just move up the coast till he finds somewhere that is still OK.

[canpakes]

I've been surfing and fishing on the same beach for 40 years and nothing has changed so far.

You know the rule. Did you measure twice? : D

[Res Ipsa]

If Atlantic Mike is surfing on the barrier islands, he really hasn't been paying attention: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... se-climate