storms

Should New York Build A Storm Surge Barrier?

December 6, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy’s storm surge combined with a high tide and buried lower Manhattan under 13 feet of water. Across all five boroughs, subways, highways, and parking garages flooded and homes and businesses were destroyed. Sandy caused nearly $20 billion in damages in New York City alone and more than 50 people died.

Ever since that disaster took place, there have been discussions about building storm surge barriers to protect the city from future storms. Columbia University’s Sabin Center recently hosted an event to discuss the feasibility of building such barriers.

A study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called the NY and NJ Harbor and Tributaries Focus Area Feasibility Study (HATS, for short) evaluates five options for coastal protection, which range in scope and price.

The most extensive option would involve constructing six miles of storm surge gates along with 26 miles of floodwalls, levees, and buried seawalls. This option would cost $62 billion but could theoretically save $131 billion in damages and protect 95% of the study area.

The study also considers the side effects of building storm surge barriers. These include environmental impacts such as effects on fish and wildlife, water quality, noise and vibrations, and changes in water flow. While these effects can be quite serious and there is opposition from many quarters related to environmental impacts, others point out that there is really no other credible defense against storm surge. The debate over whether or not to build storm surge barriers could easily last for many more years.

In the bigger picture, storm surge barriers do nothing to protect against rain-driven flooding, sea level rise, and tidal floods which continue to increase.

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Should New York Build a Storm Surge Barrier?

Photo, posted October 30, 2012, courtesy of Pamela Andrade via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Displaced By Extreme Weather

November 11, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre is the world’s authoritative source of data and analysis on internal displacement. Internal displacement refers to people being forced to flee their homes or places of habitual residence but who remain within their country’s borders. Such displacements can be the result of conflict, violence, development projects, natural disasters, or climate change. As of the end of 2018, over 41 million people were living in internal displacement because of conflict and violence alone.

This year, natural disasters are causing a record number of internal displacements. In the first half of the year, 7 million people were displaced by disasters, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all the internal displacements worldwide. The IDMC estimates that this number could hit 22 million by the end of the year.

The vast majority of displacement has been associated with storms and floods. Cyclone Fani alone in May displaced more than 3.4 million people in India and Bangladesh. In March, Cyclone Idai displaced 617,000 people in Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. In total, 950 extreme weather events in 102 countries and territories displaced 7 million people from January to June.

Technically speaking, internally displaced people are not considered to be refugees because they remain in their home countries. But the growing millions of people represent a global crisis that continues to worsen with the changing climate. The international community cannot ignore the plight of these people. Governments around the world have to redouble their efforts to protect and assist their displaced citizens as well as to invest in sustainable development and climate change adaptation.

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Extreme Weather Displaced 7 Million People in First Half of 2019

Photo, posted August 5, 2012, courtesy of the U.S. Embassy, Jakarta via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hundred-Year Floods Becoming One-Year Floods

September 26, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

By definition, 100-year floods are intense flooding events that historically tend to happen once every 100 years. Put another way, a 100-year flood has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year.

According to new research published in the journal Nature Communications, rising global temperatures may turn 100-year floods into annual occurrences in parts of the United States. The increase in severe coastal flooding events by the end of this century will be a result of rising sea levels and stronger, more frequent tropical storms and hurricanes.

The study, led by researchers at Princeton University and MIT, examined flood risk for 171 counties along the US East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. Their analysis concluded that 100-year floods will become annual events in New England. In the US Southeast and Gulf of Mexico, counties could experience such floods as often as every year up to as seldom as every 30 years.

Previously, most analysis of coastal flooding has looked only at the impact of sea level rise on flood risk. This new research combined the risk of rising seas with projected changes in coastal storms over the course of this century. Data from the Gulf of Mexico revealed that the effect of stronger storms is comparable with or even more significant than the effect of sea level change for 40% of the counties studied. So, neglecting the effects of storm climatology change is likely to significantly underestimate the impact of climate change in many places.

The hope is that more comprehensive flood risk data can be used to create more effective climate resiliency strategies all the way down to the county level.

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100-Year Floods Could Soon Happen Annually in Parts of U.S., Study Finds

Photo, posted August 31, 2017, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Protecting Vulnerable Shorelines

May 21, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Global climate change is having noticeable effects on the environment. For example, glaciers are shrinking. Plant and animal ranges are shifting and populations decreasing. And droughts, floods, and wildfires are becoming more frequent and more intense. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.

Our coastal shorelines, which are already stressed by human activity, pollution, storms, and invasive species, are one of many areas expected to be further threatened by climate change. Sea level rise and more intense and frequent storms are expected to erode and inundate coastal ecosystems and eliminate wetlands. Ocean acidification is also projected to disrupt marine environments.

But according to scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, seagrasses could play a key role in protecting these vulnerable shorelines from this onslaught. The MIT research team demonstrated how the ubiquitous marine plants dissipate wave energy and help protect against erosion, which could help mitigate damage from rising seas.

Using mathematical modelling and experiments, the MIT researchers were able to quantify for the first time how large and dense a continuous meadow of seagrass must be in order to provide adequate damping of waves in a given setting. They also found that seagrasses offer significant environmental benefits, including preventing beach erosion, protecting seawalls and coastal structures, improving water quality, and sequestering carbon.

Submerged aquatic vegetation, including seagrasses, provides an ecosystem service exceeding $4 trillion annually. Hopefully these findings can help provide useful guidance for seagrass restoration efforts.

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Seagrass’ strong potential for curbing erosion

The Effects of Climate Change

Photo, posted October 13, 2010, courtesy of the NOAA Photo Library via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And Insurance

May 17, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

While there are still some people who remain dubious about the reality of climate change, insurance companies are not among them. And, in fact, insurers are warning that climate change could make coverage for ordinary people unaffordable.

Munich Reinsurance, the world’s largest reinsurance firm, blamed global warming for $24 billion in losses from California’s recent wildfires. Such costs could soon be widely felt as premium rises are already under discussion with insurance companies having clients in vulnerable parts of the state.

With the risk from wildfires, flooding, storms and hail increasing, the only sustainable option for the insurance industry is to adjust risk prices accordingly. Ultimately, this may become a social issue. Affordability of insurance is critical because if rates go up too much, many people on low and average incomes in some regions may no longer be able to buy insurance.

The great majority of California’s 20 worst forest fires since the 1930’s has occurred since the year 2000 driven by abnormally high summer temperatures and persistent drought. The reinsurance giant analyzed decades of data with climate models and concluded that the fires are likely driven by climate change.

It isn’t just wildfires. Insurance premiums are also being adjusted in regions facing an increased threat from severe convective storms whose energy and severity are driven by global warming. These include parts of Germany, Austria, France, southwest Italy, and the U.S. Midwest.

Linking extreme weather events to climate change is a bit like attributing the performance of a steroid-using athlete to drug use. The connections are clearer in patterns than in individual disasters. But the pattern these days is pretty clear.

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Climate Change Could Make Insurance Unaffordable for Most People

Photo, posted June 12, 2013, courtesy of Jeff Head via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

2018 Was A Wet Year

March 20, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Recent news reports noted that 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record. But the changing climate is not just about temperature. 2018 was also the third-wettest year since 1895, when steady record-keeping began.

Overall, the U.S. recorded 4.68 inches more precipitation in 2018 than the 20th century average. But all that rain and snow was nothing like evenly distributed. The eastern half of the country – especially in places like North Carolina and Virginia – saw record amounts of precipitation, while most of the West remained stuck in drought.

The warming climate leads to precipitation extremes at both ends, meaning that wet places are likely to get wetter and dry places drier. There has been a marked upward trend in short-duration extreme events. For example, Cyclone Mekunu dumped almost 13 inches of rain on Salalah, Oman in 36 hours, more than double its annual average rainfall.

In the southeast and eastern U.S., the trend toward stronger storm events is mostly driven by strong warming of the oceans that fringe their shores. Warm oceans evaporate more water into the air and warm air holds more water than cooler air. Warmer, moisture-laden air acts like a blanket over the land, keeping heat trapped near the ground. Many of the states that had their wettest-ever years also set records for high minimum temperatures – their coldest temperatures were less cold than in the past.

Air temperatures are projected to warm up even further in the coming years and, as a result, many scientists are anticipating that extreme precipitation events will only get more extreme. The pattern of drought in the west and wetness in the east is likely to stay.

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2018 was the U.S.’s third-wettest year on record—here’s why

Photo, posted August 18, 2018, courtesy of Jim Lukach via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving Beaches With Seagrass

February 22, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Almost a quarter of the Gross Domestic Product of places around the Caribbean Sea is earned from tourism. Preserving the beaches in the region is an economic imperative. With increasing coastal development, the natural flow of water and sand is disrupted, natural ecosystems are damaged, and many tropical beaches simply disappear into the sea.

With such high stakes, expensive coastal engineering efforts such as repeated replenishing of sand and the construction of concrete protective walls are common strategies. Rising sea levels and increasingly powerful storms only increase the threat to tropical beaches.

Researchers from The Netherlands and Mexico recently published a study in the journal BioScience on the effectiveness of seagrass in holding onto sand and sediment along shorelines.

Seagrasses are so-named because most species have long green, grass-like leaves. They are often confused with seaweeds but are actually more closely related to flowering plants seen on land. Seagrasses have roots, stems and leaves, and produce flowers and seeds. Seagrasses can form dense underwater meadows and are one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Seagrasses provide shelter and food to an incredibly diverse community of animals, from tiny invertebrates to large fish, crabs, turtles, marine mammals and birds.

The researchers performed measurements of the ability of seagrass along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula coastline to keep sand in place and prevent erosion. They found that the amount of erosion was strongly linked to the amount of vegetation. Quite often, seagrass beds have been regarded as a nuisance, rather than a valuable asset for preserving valuable coastlines. The study opens opportunities for developing new tropical beach protection schemes in which ecology is integrated into engineering solutions.

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Seagrass Saves Beaches and Money

Photo, posted October 13, 2010, courtesy of NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saved By The Trees

February 1, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The island of Kokota, part of the Zanzibar Archipelago off the coast of Tanzania, is tiny – only one square kilometer and home to just 500 people. For centuries, its residents subsisted by harvesting the islet’s natural resources, including its trees.

By the early 21st century, the deforestation had become unsustainable and the islanders faced a crisis. Fisheries were depleted, and rivers ran dry. The changing climate brought rising sea levels, more erratic rainfall, and coral bleaching in the surrounding waters. The situation looked hopeless.

But in recent years, the island has come back from the brink of ruin. Reforestation efforts began in 2008 on the larger island of Pemba and on Kokota itself, led by a Pemba local and a Canadian tree planter who formed the non-profit Community Forests International. Since then, nearly 2 million trees have been planted on the two islands. Enthusiastic volunteers on Kokota usually help plant trees during the rainy season, when water is plentiful.

Community Forests International, along with spearheading the tree planting effort, also built Kokota’s first school, and installed rainwater storage tanks for the community.

The conservation group is now devising ways for Kokota to make more money by diversifying its agriculture with crops that grow well in its climate including spices like cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg. They are also helping locals to grow more and different vegetables in their gardens.

Small, poor communities are often the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as drought, powerful storms, and depleted fisheries. Tiny Kokota provides an example of an environmental comeback. Fighting climate change requires economic solutions along with environmental solutions. For this one tiny island, it appears to have been saved by the trees.

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This island was on the brink of disaster. Then, they planted thousands of trees.

Photo, posted July 18, 2015, courtesy of Marco Zanferrari via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Shifting Climate Zones

November 16, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the climate warms, the planet’s landscape is changing. The Arctic ice is shrinking, the ocean is rising altering coastlines, and plants, animals and diseases are on the move. The world’s climate zones are changing in significant and measurable ways.

Cloudbursts And New York City

November 13, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Cloudbursts are intense rainstorms that drop enormous amounts of water over a short period of time. Climate change is expected to make cloudbursts occur more frequently. Cities around the world are looking for better ways to cope with weather phenomena like cloudbursts.

Coral Nurseries

July 9, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In the past, coral conservationists focused their efforts on protecting reefs from direct environmental threats such as land-based pollution and damaging fishing practices. These efforts continue, but as coral reefs face increasingly dire threats, conservationists are turning toward more proactive approaches.

[Read more…] about Coral Nurseries

Climate Change Threatens the U.S. Military

February 20, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study from the Pentagon, nearly half of United States military sites are threatened by wild weather linked to climate change. The U.S. Department of Defense states that drought, wind, and flooding that occur due to reasons other than storms topped the list of natural disasters that endanger 1,700 military sites around the world – everything from outposts to large bases.

The 100-Day Giant Battery

January 11, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Australian state of South Australia suffered crippling electricity outages in September 2016, which coincided with gale-force winds and flooding rains. The outages were triggered by storm damage to major transmission lines followed by wind farms disconnecting from the power grid.

Can We Stop A Hurricane?

December 1, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

This has been a particularly terrible hurricane season. Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria, and Nate all formed in the Atlantic and headed for North America. People in Houston, Florida, all over the Caribbean, and especially Puerto Rico are trying to recover from the effects of these powerful storms.

Tsunami And Invasive Species

November 13, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study published in the journal Science, scientists have discovered that hundreds of Japanese marine species have been swept across the Pacific Ocean to the United States following the deadly Tsunami in 2011.

Climate Change And Hurricanes

October 4, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

No single weather event can be attributed to climate change. Storms, floods and droughts have always happened and some of them have always been severe. However, two centuries of people burning fossil fuels has altered temperatures just enough that some of the storms we have seen in recent times have been much worse than they otherwise would have been.

Alaska’s Threatened Communities

January 27, 2017 By EarthWise

Because of its Arctic location, Alaska is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the United States. The past year has been the warmest on record. The forces of erosion and increasingly powerful storms have resulted in the imminent risk of destruction for at least 31 Alaskan towns and cities. Many are predicted to become uninhabitable over the next few decades. Residents of these places are likely to join the growing flow of climate refugees around the globe.

Climate-Induced Relocation

July 21, 2016 By WAMC WEB

One of the thorniest problems arising from the changing climate is the degradation of inhabited areas that forces entire communities to relocate permanently. Basically, we don’t really have the infrastructure in place to deal with such occurrences.

Climate Change And The Global Food System

December 24, 2015 By WAMC WEB

One of the most troubling aspects of global climate change is its potential impact on the production, distribution and quality of food. A report issued at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference focused on identifying climate change impacts on global food security. Food security is the ability of people to obtain and use sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food. Even without the impact of climate change, food security is a challenge because of increasing population, poverty, and changing eating habits.