How Powerful Hurricanes Are Changing Minds in North Carolina (Credit: Inside Climate News)12/31/2018  Florence Hits Swansboro, NC/Credit: Tom Copeland, AP In 2016, Hurricane Matthew walloped North Carolina. The state was still recovering from Matthew when Hurricane Florence severely flooded the Carolinas this year. Later in the season, Hurricane Michael hit the western part of the Carolinas as a weakened tropical cyclone after battering the Florida Panhandle. Hurricane Matthew formed in the Caribbean in early October of 2016. It quickly became a monstrous category 5 storm and barreled through several Caribbean islands, including Haiti and the Bahamas. On October 8th, the storm made landfall on the coast of South Carolina as a category 1 hurricane. The storm caused hundreds of deaths throughout the Caribbean, with 25 in North Carolina and 4 in South Carolina. Water levels were high all along the Southeast coast, but North Carolina recorded the storm’s highest U.S. water level, with Cape Hatteras recording a water level of 5.8 feet above the Mean Higher High Water (MHHW), or the average daily highest tide. NOAA concluded that eastern North Carolina had been hit hardest by Matthew, with over 100,000 structures damaged in the region. To understand why this part of the state is so prone to flooding and surge from hurricanes, one must understand the geography of the region. North Carolina’s Coastal Plain is the lowest-lying region of the state. The Coastal Plain can further be divided into two sub-regions: the Inner and Outer Coastal Plains. The Outer Coastal Plain consists of the Outer Banks and the Tidewater region. This region is prone to severe flooding and acts as a buffer for the Inner Coastal Plain. Elevations in the Inner Coastal Plain can reach as high as 900-1,000 feet above sea level. However, in the case of Matthew, storm surge and flooding reached the higher elevations of the Inner Coastal Plain, likely due to the state’s expansive river and inlet system. Residents of the state were still recovering from Matthew even this year. A man in Lenoir County, about 75 miles east of Raleigh, was still waiting on the Lenoir County buyout list for his trailer to be bought—over two years later. In a small town in South Carolina’s Pee Dee region, the town’s main street had been designated a floodplain after Matthew, increasing the cost of building, and thereby slowing the town’s rebuilding process. Stories like this were being reported throughout North Carolina just as Hurricane Florence rattled the state this year. The storm created a flooding catastrophe, with a recorded rainfall of 35.93 inches in Elizabethtown, NC. This broke the previous record rainfall for a tropical cyclone in the state, which was held by Hurricane Floyd which brought 24.06 inches of rain to Southport, NC. The storm slowed down once it hit land, which aided in the flooding aspect of the storm, bringing it to catastrophic levels. After Florence, public opinion concerning the climate seemed to have changed. Elon University conducted a poll of over 840 registered voters and found that nearly 83% of all registered voters in the state believed that climate change will have a negative impact on coastal communities. The needed policy change came this year, when Governor Roy Cooper committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the state 40% by 2025. This is a move that is in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, the agreement that set strict global standards to cut carbon emissions. While the US withdrew from this agreement, North Carolina is taking measures to mitigate climate change that are in line with the agreement. The Governor went a step further by issuing an executive order in October which outlined the state’s rigorous plan to combat climate change. Part of this plan is to move hog farms and communities away from the coast via buyouts. North Carolina is one of the top ten states for agricultural production, according to the USDA, and it is a leader in the production of certain commonplace goods, especially beef. Hog farmers in the state are extremely concerned about their future. While coastal communities will always be more likely to sustain significant damage, they are also more likely to have the money to rebuild. 33 of the state’s 3,000 hog farm lagoons were breached, causing the spilling of hog waste that could spread diseases and infections. Many of these lagoons are located in more impoverished areas of the state, and some were actually bought out by the state’s government after Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The program was canceled, but then revived by Cooper after Matthew. Buyouts were ramped up even more this year after Florence. To top it all off, a major hog producer, Smithfield, proceeded with their own plans to cut emissions 25% by 2025 by collecting methane energy at its hog farms. That little push from the private sector may give the state the momentum needed to enforce adaptation plans for the nearly 120,000 residents at risk of coastal flooding in the state. To learn more about other important climate topics, click here! © 2018 Weather Forecaster Jacob Dolinger
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 Carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere is the primary driver of human-caused climate change. When we talk about carbon in the atmosphere, carbon sources and carbon sinks are often mentioned. But what is the difference between a source and a sink?
A carbon source is just what it sounds like – something that puts carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. The largest source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is burning fossil fuels for electricity generation and transportation. A carbon sink is something that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Plants are very effective carbon sinks, as they take in carbon dioxide during the process of photosynthesis. The ocean also functions as a sink for carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – however, the combination of water with carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid, which results in ocean acidification and causes other environmental issues like coral bleaching. One of the key ways in which we can fight climate change is by employing these carbon sinks. Although large forests like the Amazon are vital natural carbon sinks, important research is taking place every day to develop and discover new potential, technologies, and strategies for carbon removal. One of these strategies is reforestation, where new trees are planted in previously-forested areas where trees had been cut down for development or to provide resources. Another carbon sink technology is biochar – partially burned crop waste that, when added to soil, enriches the soil for plant growth and functions as a carbon sink. Other interesting carbon sink strategies and technologies can be found at this link Aquatic plants have great potential to be grown as carbon sinks, as the ocean is home to many diverse species of plants. One recent study has shown that seagrasses in deep waters are able to store large amounts of carbon – just like their shallow-water counterparts. It was previously thought that deep water meadows would not store as much carbon, because the grasses are shorter and less dense than their shallow water meadows; and less sunlight reaches deeper parts of the ocean. A deep seagrass meadow that covers the same area as Switzerland, located near the Great Barrier Reef, has great potential to function as a carbon sink and help fight climate change. For more information on this study, check out this link While large-scale carbon sinks are a key element in preventing worst-case climate change, individual efforts are also an important piece of the puzzle. Adding a garden to your yard is a great way to help take carbon out of the atmosphere and increase air quality in your area. Gardening is a great hobby, but of course, not everyone has time to maintain a full garden. To make this easier, try adding some low-maintenance plants to your yard to increase your home’s potential as a carbon sink. ©2018 Meteorologist Margaret Orr For more information about climate, visit https://www.globalweatherclimatecenter.com/climate-topics The Milankovitch Cycle: The Difference Between Natural and Anthropogenic Heating (Credit: BBC)12/27/2018  Sometimes it can be unclear how natural and anthropogenic heating of the Earth are different. Throughout Earth’s history, it has gone through phases of frigid temperatures (ice ages) and hot temperatures (interglacial periods). The process responsible for this natural climate change is called the Milankovitch Cycle, named after the Serbian astronomer who calculated the three major factors in the cycle that change the climate. These three factors are:
These three factors all deal with the positioning of the Earth relative to the Sun. The first factor is eccentricity, or the shape of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Over time, Earth’s orbit will become more or less elliptical on a 100,000-year cycle, changing how close it gets to the Sun as it orbits. You can imagine this by taking a circular orbit and flattening it to make an oval-like orbit. After a while, the now-squashed circle will return to its original form. You can see that, as the shape gets more oval-like, the Earth will get closer and farther away from the Sun as it orbits, much more than when the shape is more circular. Right now, we have a more circular orbit around the Sun. Next, is the axial tilt of the Earth. This is just as the name implies: the change of tilt of Earth’s axis. Earth’s axis changes from an angle of 21.5 degrees to 24.5 degrees over 41,000 years, which in turn changes how much solar radiation the polar regions receive. The steeper the angle of the Earth’s tilt, the more solar radiation the polar region that faces the Sun receives, and the less solar radiation the opposite polar region receives. The third and final factor that influences climate in the Milankovitch Cycle is Earth’s “wobble.” This “wobble” refers to where the Earth’s imaginary axis points to arbitrary areas in space. Over about 23,000 years, the axis will complete a circular pattern where it points to different stars in the sky. A common star that is used for reference for this is Polaris, the north star.  This image shows the current phase of “wobbling” of the Earth, compared to the future “wobble” phase of the Earth (Credit: Edward Hahn). How do these changes in the orientation of the Earth relate to our current problem with climate change? In order to answer this question, we can use the history of Earth’s climate and past CO2 levels in order to understand how we are impacting the natural cycles of change in the global temperature as well as atmospheric CO. Starting at 400,000 years ago, we see from the graph below that Earth’s temperature follows a pattern that oscillates up and down constantly, as do the CO2 levels of Earth. The dips in the graph represent ice ages, while the peaks represent warm interglacial periods.  This graph demonstrates the relationship between CO2 levels and temperature and how they change over time (credit: Environmental Dense Fund). From the graph, it is evident that CO2 has a strong correlation with the temperature of the Earth, and that CO2 levels are higher than they have ever been in Earth’s recent history. The alarming spike in recent years in CO2 can lead to the conclusion that temperature will also spike like it has in the past. The problem with climate change becomes clear when we closely inspect the cycle’s pattern. The Milankovitch Cycle’s pattern indicates that we should expect to experience falling global temperatures soon, but there is no sign that we will be experiencing any global declines in temperature in the foreseeable future. There is more work to be done in climatological research to discover what impacts humans have had or may have on the planet, and what measures may be taken to avoid potentially dangerous temperature changes.
To learn more about other global climate topics, be sure to click here! © 2018 Weather Forecaster Cole Bristow How May Future Climate Change Influence Global Seasonal Cooling Demands? (Credit: Climate Central)12/2/2018  DISCUSSION: As planet Earth continues to evolve with time, there is little to no debate that global climate change issues will continue to impact various aspects of the global economy. The greatest concerns are tied to the fact that as the Earth’s average seasonal temperatures continue to gradually increase with time, there will continue to be a proportional increase in the respective energy demands by people from around the world. More specifically, with hotter Summer days, there will be more and more demands for air conditioning resources around the world as well as water demands for both general day-to-day hydration and cool showers. To get a bit more into this issue, there is an exact excerpt attached below from a recent article which was published by the online science writer team from Climate Central which goes into greater detail regarding how this issue has evolved over time.
“Summers are getting hotter and this is coming with a cost. As greenhouse gases build in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, the number of hotter average and extreme temperatures continues to mount. To better understand how this is impacting local communities, Climate Central analyzed trends in cooling degree days and minimum temperatures for cities across the U.S. in a special report: The High Cost of HOT. Our study analyzed the number of nights each year when the temperature remained above 65°F (for cities that rarely experience nights above 65°F, we chose 55°F), which is an engineering temperature standard for keeping buildings cool. In our analysis of 244 cities across the U.S., we found that 87 percent are having more of these warm nights since 1970, with the biggest increase in the Southwest. Warming nights are driving the increase in average temperatures. According to NOAA/NCEI, overnight lows since 1900 are warming at a 20 percent higher rate than the daytime highs. Another way to measure the increase in heat is cooling degree days (CDD), which are used to determine how much cooling is needed to keep a building at a comfortable temperature. CDDs do not actually measure days at all. Rather, they measure the number of degrees that the daily average temperature is above 65°F. So, if the average temperature for a day is 80°F, there were 15 CDDs in that day. Some of the largest increases in CDDs are also seen in the Southwest, however CDDs are increasing sharply in places that traditionally did not need air conditioning in the summer months. For example, the number of CDDs has nearly doubled in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon in the last half-century.” However, another major issue is the corresponding increase in the cost to power such facilities which are responsible for providing cooling resources. This is a very complicated issue but can nonetheless be addressed through a brief overview of the topic which was reasonably well captured as well by the Climate Central team’s investigations Thus, attached below is another excerpt from the corresponding article which discusses the issues of cost in much greater detail. “Cooling costs are rising as a result. Air conditioning already makes up the largest share of residential electricity use (17 percent) in the U.S., with Americans spending over $27 billion to cool their homes in 2015. The average annual cost for homes with air conditioning across the U.S. is approximately $250, but in the high use areas of the South, air conditioning costs are almost $450 a year. A 2014 Climate Central analysis of projected future summer temperatures shows that by 2100, New England summers will be as hot as current summers in Florida, dramatically increasing the need for artificial cooling.” To learn more about the actual warming projections as investigated from across the United States courtesy of the corresponding article generated by Climate Central research team, click here! To learn more about other global climate topics, be sure to click here! © 2018 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz |
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