Transcript Melting glaciers and sea level rise

Making Sense of Climate Change, Part 2:
Warming, sea level rise
and extreme weather
Bert G Drake
Senior Scientist, Emeritus
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
[email protected] 410-867-1957
Photo courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Program
2016 hottest year on record!!
Temperature in Baghdad at the international airport hit 109
or higher nearly every day since June 19.
Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, all-time high of nearly 126 degrees.
Basra 129!
Heat index 140 across Uniteed Arab Emirates.
Washington Post, August 10, 2016
Persian Gulf may be too hot for human survival by 2090.
Washington Post, October 2015
Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe
Image: NASA
Arctic sea ice surrounded by land
Antarctic sea ice surrounded by water
Photo: Andreas Weith, Creative Commons
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
Albedo: relative “whiteness”
Photo: Sam Carana/Arctic-News.Blogspot.com
http://albedochange.blogspot.com/
Declining snow cover
Credit: Robert Simmon, NASA Earth Observatory
http://www.livescience.com/26091-arctic-snow-cover-decline.html
Rhone Glacier (Gletch Valley, Switzerland)
shrunk dramatically since 1850
Photograph courtesy of bigfoto.com, inset courtesy Library of Congress
Boulder Glacier, Montana, Glacier National Park.
Why glaciers matter
Drinking water for hundreds of millions of people
Irrigation for crops and water for animals during drought
Electric power from dams on glacier rivers
Scientific and Technical Working Group Maryland Climate Change Commission
River deltas where rising sea level threatens communities
Profiling risk and sustainability in coastal deltas of the world
Tessler et al. Science 7 August 2015
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-reveals-acceleration-of-sea-level-rise-20055
Kopp et al. 2016 (PNAS)
Spanger-Siegfried, E., M.F. Fitzpatrick, and K. Dahl. 2014. Encroaching tides: How sea level rise and tidal flooding
threaten U.S. East and Gulf Coast communities over the next 30 years. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned
Scientists.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/infogra
phic-sea-level-rise-global-warming.html#.WJiTsMIiy70
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/infogra
phic-sea-level-rise-global-warming.html#.WJiTsMIiy70
Superstorm Sandy, October 2012
• Largest hurricane in the
Atlantic…over 1,000
miles wide
• Caused $75 billion in
damage
• Killed 233 people
Credit: NASA
Adaptive …”measures fall into three categories: defending against the sea,
accommodating rising water, and retreating from the immediate shoreline”
Spanger-Siegfried, E., M.F. Fitzpatrick, and K. Dahl. 2014. Encroaching tides: How sea level rise and tidal flooding
threaten U.S. East and Gulf Coast communities over the next 30 years. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned
Scientists.