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The great thaw of America’s north is coming
- artur_makly 9y agoNYTimes made an awesome interactive chart on global cities and their historical temperatures : https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/world/how-much-warmer-was-your-city-in-2016.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/world/how-muc...
- japhyr 9y agoI live in southeast Alaska, and climate change frightens me here as well. Our area, a temperate rainforest with steep mountains rising almost straight up from the ocean, has always experienced landslides. You can see slide scars throughout the mountains, from a boat or from a plane. But in recent years we've had a few that cause people to be much more concerned about the possibility of being caught in a slide. Two years ago there was a slide in town (Sitka) that killed three people. Before that there was a slide that took out a remote cabin, and the two people staying at the cabin barely outran the slide. Now every time it rains hard people talk to each other about the risk of slides. Meteorologists' predictions haven't helped much, because most slide forecasts are just general statements about an elevated risk of slides for the entire region. No one can predict a high likelihood of slides in particular locations, so everyone is left to evaluate the risk for themselves in deciding whether to stay at home during heavy rain. We live in a rainforest, but most of our rain comes from light steady rain most of the year. We have some heavier rainfall events in the spring and fall. It seems the slides have happened during periods of intense heavy rain - 2+ inches over the course of several hours. What scares me about climate change is what might happen if we end up with significantly heavier amounts of rainfall in short periods of time. What happens if we get 6+ inches in a day like we've seen more recently in other regions? When I get a lull between my various projects I'm going to do some analysis of our long-term weather data, and try to correlate it with slide events. I'm curious to see if the rainfall patterns are changing over time, beyond just total amounts each year. I'm curious to see if I, as a local, can identify some weather patterns here that outside meteorologists haven't noticed yet.
- lovemenot 9y ago>> I'm curious to see if I, as a local, can identify some weather patterns here that outside meteorologists haven't noticed yet. reply It's almost inevitable that some local would be able to identify extreme local patterns. To generalise the result though, a problem you'd have, if you turn out to be one such local, is figuring out the extent to which your experience is common, or just down to unfortunate local factors.
- japhyr 9y agoI'm talking about connecting specific factors with specific outcomes. When it's raining hard and I want to assess slide risk for my own sake, I look at a few factors: total rainfall over a short time period; average wind speeds and gusts; and how quickly the rivers are rising. I think I might have a sense of a signature of these three factors that predict a higher chance of slide activity. I want to run a more careful analysis of those factors, and see if I can come up with an actionable signature for slide risk. Even if it works for just this town, it will be really helpful. But I know enough not to say much about that locally unless I have a concrete proposal.
- lovemenot 9y agoI see. Over the years, there's been a lot of similar research into localised earthquake prediction. Results are not actionable yet. I am not at all informed on the subject, but hours-since-last-slide(s), their proximity and magnitude would be some additional factors you might consider using. If historical weather and geo-tagged slide data is available for the whole region, you could use it to train and test models.
- KGIII 9y agoI went to boarding school in the same State I now live in. I have seen the climate change. Even in the decade since my retirement, the climate has changed. It's had an interesting effect in that the summer hasn't had many hot days, but the average is higher. This year, I only had a couple of days go above 90 deg f. My winter has fewer longer cold snaps, but some pretty steep cold snaps (-48 deg f this past year was the record). My snow totals have actually increased from area historical norms. I've been able to get the historical data and have a weather station that logs my local conditions. There's also a bit of microclimate effect going on here. I'm not a climate scientist, so I am really only capable of comparing the results. If it wasn't so damaging, I'd be all for it. I love snow and hate when it goes above 90. I don't get grumpy until it goes below -20. It's too bad that it's going to cause lots of damage for other people. Sort of related: You can get the data and run the models yourself. I used to model traffic and there are some similarities. It seemed like a good thing to learn a bit about, so I spent a couple of years poking at it in my free time.
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- marcoperaza 9y agoSince it's come up in the comments and it's one of my pet peeves: there's some incredible confirmation bias around claims of personally observing climate change. Historical temperature fluctuations are huge, so no, you are almost certainly not "observing" climate change in your hometown. Human-caused climate change is expected to cause steady changes in the average, almost invisible in short time periods compared to the wild fluctuations that would anyway occur year to year, decade to decade, in any area. Climate change has now become a religion though, so I'm not surprised that the faithful are having the equivalent of apparitions. (This doesn't mean it's not real, just that it's a point of political dogma for some, which I think is unfortunate because it only makes doubters more skeptical by foreclosing opportunities for persuasion.)
- jimjimjim 9y agoThe world could actually be on fire and some people would claim that climate change doesn't exist.
- lowpro 9y agoThat's because if the world was on fire all at once it would be weather, rather than climate.
- throwaway5752 9y agoYou would be probably well served by linking to scientific data and publications when dismissing something so blithely.
- jjawssd 9y agoClimate change data https://imgur.com/a/nUDmA https://imgur.com/a/nUDmA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/All_palaeotemps.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/All_pala... The data is not fake. ps: weather is not political. EDIT: If you find this post to be of interest to you, please upvote. There are many people which disagree with the information I posted without posting a retort. How can we function as a healthy society without the willingness to question what we are told. Must we have sacred cows?
- throwaway5752 9y agoHas anyone starting tracking wealthy individuals' purchases of land in northern latitudes (Canadian immigration, Alaska land purchase, north European/Russian relocation)? https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/on-a-warmer-planet-which-cities-will-be-safest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/on-a-warmer-plane... suggests the Pacific northwest, could this be driving some of the land purchases in Vancouver? It mean, climate change is ridiculous obvious to everyone at this point. It was summer temperatures across the east coast of the US until a week ago, and looking at 20 year trend data, things are rapidly deteriorating.
- i_feel_great 9y agoHere in Australia we are still planning to build large coal mines to fuel the furnaces in India and China and for our own power plants. Solar and wind are hippie conspiracies to make us all unemployed and gay, so our politicians keep telling us. You poor fools are doomed!
- jimjimjim 9y agodilemma stable western country with huge amounts of empty land and too much sun makes it fantastic for solar. but an entire economy built on mines and the chinese have reduced their buying of iron so coal it is. and those mines have a lot of voting power.
- Taniwha 9y agoand little water
- canoebuilder 9y agoI'd guess that the amount of energy harvestable in the form of sunlight from otherwise unused land far exceeds the amount of energy in the form of coal resources in Australia. But how to ship it to China and India? Set up some high voltage lines? Convert the locally generated electricity to some form of transportable, easily re-convertible embodied energy?
- dghughes 9y agoI saw "Americas" but I see BBC means America's as in the US. But anyhow the north in Canada is obviously affected too. I recall seeing on the news an RCMP barracks in the far north had to extend its foundation stilts no concrete foundations in the north. The stilts stick into the permafrost and are cooled by refrigeration during the summer so the building doesn't sink. The stilts used to stick into the permafrost a few metres now they have to put them down 15 metres.
- md2be 9y agoIt was a very cool winter last year here in lA
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- mjevans 9y agoIndividual data points don't isolate temporally local events sufficiently. A better measure would be to chart each season as an error-bar range on a graph and visually compare the averages over time to observe trends. I think you might be able to compare that with data at other observation points (airports are usually a good candidate) to show how things likely looked when they weren't under observation.
- RickJWag 9y agoIf climate change does bring the predicted changes, automatic wealth redistribution would be a side-effect. The current holders of high-dollar waterfront properties would be pushed away. Those holding less expensive properties further inland will be given an unexpected windfall. Scientists are predicting warmer temperatures will also bring increased crop yields, lessening world hunger. If climate change does come to pass, it won't all be bad.
- mac01021 9y agoCitation about that crop yields thing?
- weeksie 9y agoI wonder if this means the US will become more or less belligerent with Canada?