Regional Climate Change in the United states

A recent comprehensive study (released in December 2007) has identified 4 major probable regional climate changes in the continental United States:

1. Increased heat waves in the American Midwest

2. Increase wildfires in the American West

3. Deteoriation of Gulf Coast Wetlands

4. Chesapeake Bay Hypoxia (oxygen shortage)

We start with the Midwest Scenario:

In July 1995, Chicago experienced three consecutive nights of very hot temperatures (not getting below 80); in total, nearly 700 more people died than statistically expected Therefore, one definition of a heatwave is the warmest average minimum temperatures over three consecutive nights in a given year

Model results show the following for various urban centers:

• Chicago: Increase from 1.7 to 2.1 heatwaves per year increasing in duration from 7.3 days to 8.8 days

• Cincinatti: Increase from 1.4 to 2.1 heatwaves per year increasing in duration from 8.8 days to 10.7 days

• St. Louis: Increase from 1.4 to 1.9 heatwaves per year increasing in duration from 10.3 days to 14.2 days

Wild Fires in the American West

Note the current forest fire potential map is relatively calm due to the cool, wet spring that most of the American west has experienced. But this is merely growing fuel ...

The wild fire problem is the result of two conditions. 1) Post 1950 fire supression techniques have resulted in unnaturally high biomass per unit acre in most western forests; 2) Long hot dry summers

Areas coded in yellow and higher represent signficant areas of elevated risk for extensive forest fires:

• 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona burned 470 million acres
• 2002 Oregon Biscuit fire: 500 million acres

  

• Global Forest Fire Satellite Monitoring Project

• Another great resource

  Sidebar: The globe really is being monitored on a daily basis - if your clued into these sources, it will help raise awareness of the condition of the planet.

Modeling future precipation patterns in the United States is difficult. There is a not well-known summer Moonsoon season that strongly affects Arizona and less strongly, Utah and Nevada. Some models show this increasing, some decreasing. The worst case scenario (upper right) suggests significantly reduced precipation in the Pacific Northwest.

But the PNW seems most at risk:

Gulf Coast Wetlands:

Change is a consequence of rising sea levels couple with potentially greater storm and storm surge damage.

The overall amplitude of the effect is difficult to gauge but some of the expected changes are:

• Reduce dbiological productivity in Mobile Bay, Apalachicola Bay, Tampa Bay, and the lagoons of Texas due to change in mix between freshwater input and salt water input.

• extreme salt concentrations in coastal ecosystems, results in a decline of valuable habitats such as the mangroves and seagrasses in Florida Bay or South Texas lagoons.

• A drier climate along the Gulf Coast combined with activities such as dredging, constructing reservoirs, diverting surface water, and pumping ground water can accelerate local subsidence and sinkhole formation in areas underlain by limestone.

• Increases in hypoxia in Gulf of Mexico due to increase in nitrate-laden discharge of Mississippi river.

• As a result of human development, interactions of sea-level rise with hurricanes will increasingly disrupt the normal landward migration of barrier islands and contribute to their erosion.

• Warmer average temperatures and milder winters will likely result in a higher incidence of damage by agricultural and forestry pests such as the Southern pine bark beetle.

  Much of North Carolina is in Danger as well

Hypoxia Increases in Chesapeake Bay: