Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation

Featuring:
Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, the Climate Institute

Kristie L. Ebi, Executive Director, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 2 Technical Support Unit - Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability

Katharine L. Jacobs, Professor, University of Arizona Soil, Water and Environmental Science Department

Susanne Moser, Director and Principal Researcher, Susanne Moser Research & Consulting

Last week, the American Meteorological Society hosted a panel on the impacts of climate change. “Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation” was designed to offer attendees and viewers information on and strategies for the preparation and coping with an increasingly changing climate. The 90-minute video can be found here, but for those who don’t have that time to spare, I’ll break it down for you, speaker-by-speaker.

The first presenter, Michael MacCracken, spoke about a study by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, called Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, released June 2009. The report details the effects of climate change on our planet, and also addresses a question that has been a hot topic in the climate debate: how much of climate change is caused by humans? Well, according to the report, “global warming is occurring, and primarily is human-induced.” Societal emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are the main contributors here.

MacCracken summarizes the effects of climate change, boiling them down to: increasing temperature, increasingly intense downpours, rising sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, longer growing season, longer ice-free season in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and changes in river flows.

The report says that climate change will stress water resources, creating less snow but more rain. Wetter areas will get wetter, dryer areas get dryer, and there will be increased competition for water. The weather extremes and water availability will result in crop and livestock challenges. Sea level rise will create increased erosion and flooding, as well as wetland loss (as happened with hurricane Katrina in Lousiana). The report also says that threats to human health will increase, such as heat stress, water-born diseases due to heavy downpours, reduced air quality, extreme weather events, and more.

MacCracken concludes his speech with a sense of urgency: “What happens in the future is going to depend on what we do today. It’s going to happen with respect to emissions… to stop climate change we’ve got to reduce emissions by 80% or more to recover.” And he says one thing is for certain, “we’ll have to adapt to climate change.”

The next speaker, Kristie L. Ebi, briefed the audience on the ABCD of Adaptation. The ‘A’ of adaptation is Action, which includes adapting our infrastructure to deal with climate change. Of course, in order to take action, there needs to be awareness that there is a serious problem which exists, and Eli says this awareness is pretty low right now. We need to understand that the problem matters to everyone, not just those who are initially effected. The ‘B’ of adaptation is to Be Prepared, meaning we need to predict the condition of the world in 2100. The ‘C’ stands for the Challenges of adaptation. Right now, there is a lack of awareness of the problem, and even less concern for the need to adapt to climate change. According to Ebi, there is a perception that mitigation is more urgent, when in reality adaptation may just as important - maybe more so - at this point. There is also limited funding for successful adaptation action, as well as institutional roadblocks, such as political agendas.

The ‘D’ stands for Decision makers, and the opportunities they have. According to Ebi, we need to develop a national adaptation strategy that will enable, facilitate, empower, and incentivize decision makers. The U.S. needs to emerge as a “major player in adaptation internationally,” providing funding for UN climate change programs.

“The U.S. alone is responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions… It’s time for [us] to step forward and really play a major role.”

The third speaker was Katharine L. Jacobs. Her presentation was titled Water Management and Climate Change: Challenges and Solutions, and she talked about the impacts of climate change as delivered through the water system. The impacts range from less supply of water from snow melt, to extreme events such as floods and droughts.

“You don’t have to be a believer in climate change to know that we’re not adapted to deal with what water managers are going to be dealing with in the future.”

While talking about how to proceed forth with adaptation, Katharine raises a very good question: why do we need to be SO sure about the every piece of scientific data behind climate change before we start taking measures to adapt to the shifts in climate we are going to see? We don’t require this much certainty before making decisions in other parts of our lives. We need to move past the paradigm of requiring exhausting scientific data before we start taking measures to conserve and ensure we are suited to adapt to a changing climate. “The critical point is demand [of water] is increasing and supply is reducing, and we need to do things a little differently as a result,” she says.

The last speaker was Susanne Moser, whose presentation was titled U.S. States Adapting to Climate Change: The Case of California. Apparently the Golden State has been one of the few who are doing climate research right, providing funding, used climate science to guide policy, and established a credible knowledge base on the regional impacts of climate change.

Moser boiled down the impediments to federal adaptation planning, including: lack of funding, political opposition, legal obstacles, and lack of intra- and inter-agency coordination. On the state level, impediments include: lack of federal guidance, inadequate expertise, state budget constraints, and lack of public engagement and grassroots pressure. There is clearly a lot to fix if we are going to get to where Moser thinks we should be. But no one said it was going to be easy.

One thing I really appreciated about each speech was the blunt, albeit unsettling, acceptance that the climate is changing, and that we will have to adapt as a consequence. As Kristie Ebi phrased it: “The greenhouses gases that are up in the atmosphere right now have committed the earth to around 50 years of climate change. We can not stop it… What we are going to experience in terms of impacts really does depend on adaptation.”

We need a call to action if we are going to deal with the impacts of a changing climate.

What can you do to help?

• Start by spreading the word. Be actively involved in climate change-related discussion, both online and off.
• The more we can spread awareness that there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, the more likely governments and institutions will listen.
• If enough people care, public institutions have to, as well.
• Also, keep an eye on our event calendar for environmental events to attend in your area.

At TENTHMIL, we try to end most of our stories with ways that you can make a difference. So, as always, keep checking TENTHMIL for ways to help!