Using data from a recent study published in Nature, this map from VisualCapitalist shows country-by-country population vulnerability to 1-in-100-year coastal and inland flooding events: www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-highest-flood-risk/
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Africa, which produces about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, is expected to be hard hit by climate change. This map, from Statista, shows country-by-country assessments of Africa's anticipated resilience to climate change, based on a combination of forecasts vis-a-vis climate impact, local livelihoods, and governmental capacity to respond. www.statista.com/chart/28136/index-scores-for-climate-resilience-of-african-countries/
Americans often confuse the terms "monsoon" and "typhoon." A monsoon is an annual rainy season; it is usually critical for life in the region. A typhoon is a wind storm, like a hurricane, in the Pacific Ocean. The extreme flooding in the news in Pakistan is being caused by monsoon rains. Agriculture would be all but impossible in Pakistan without monsoon rains, but, unfortunately, this year's arrived earlier than normal and are falling more heavily than normal. As of the last official U.N. count, nearly half a million homes in Pakistan have been damaged by the recent flooding and more than 1,000 people have died. This map, from the U.N., shows the damage is concentrated along the lower reaches of the Indus River. By the way, despite was you might read elsewhere, Pakistan cannot experience a typhoon: hurricane-like wind storms in the Indian Ocean are cyclones. (Map from reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/pakistan-2022-monsoon-floods-situation-report-no-03-26-august-2022.)
This has been China's hottest, driest summer since record keeping began 61 years ago, and the impact on the Yangtze River has been severe, with tributaries dried up and water flow in the main branch running 50% below normal. The Yangtze is the longest river in the world that runs through only one country, and five of China's megacities -- cities with a population of at least 10 million -- are in the Yangtze River basin. The Yangtze is not only a key source of water for drinking and irrigation, it is also a major source of hydroelectric power. In Sichuan Province, which gets 80% of its electricity from hydropower, factories have been shut recently to save power for home air conditioning. The next few days may also determine the impact on China's main rice crop. www.euronews.com/2022/08/21/china-declares-first-ever-drought-emergency-amid-intense-heatwave
The geologic record shows animals are not the only things that migrate: forests move hundreds of miles, back and forth, in response to changing climate patterns. Recent research, based on satellite imagery and field work, finds that white spruce are now germinating and fully establishing themselves north of Alaska's Brooks Range, which had previously been the biogeographic divide between tundra, to the north, and boreal forest, to the south. This map, from Quartz, shows the newly documented spruce in Alaska's northern tundra. (Map from qz.com/spruce-trees-have-arrived-in-the-arctic-tundra-a-centur-1849406537.)
California's Central Valley is one of the world's most productive agricultural regions. But it is also periodically, at least measured in geologic time, a long, thin lake. Massive flooding inundates the Central Valley when moisture-rich atmospheric rivers, like the Pineapple Express, stall over California, dumping rain and melting snow in the Sierras. Recent research shows this happens, on average, every 100-200 years. Because this happened most recently between Dec. 1861 and Jan. 1862, scientists are increasingly concerned that the region is ripe for a megaflood event. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/12/megaflood-california-flood-rain-climate/
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this year high-tide or "sunny day" flooding -- when water floods streets and bubbles up through storm drains without storm activity -- on the East Coast of the U.S. is expected to show an increase of more than 150% since 2000. NOAA's calculations are based on data from a network of water-level stations along the U.S. coasts and Great Lakes. This interactive mapping site shows past, present, and anticipated 2050 sunny day flooding levels. (In Washington, DC, for example, the average number of high-tide flooding events in 2000 was three; in 2021, it was five, and by 2050, it is forecast to be 55-85.) tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/HighTideFlooding_AnnualOutlook.html
The ocean's fish are on the move in response to climate change. What happens when "your" fish move to someone else's territorial waters? This article from The Independent (UK) looks at new research about fish movement and the impact these movements may have on international fishing agreements. www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/fish-stocks-climate-crisis-disputes-b1996157.html
Europe's record-shattering heat has been in the news, but "Qatar is heating faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, the consequence of being a peninsula surrounded by overheating seas in one of the hottest corners of the world." This article from Geographical (UK) looks at what climate change means for Qatar and how the country is responding: geographical.co.uk/climate-change/climate-and-qatar?
This article from The Wall Street Journal considers what happens when climate change meets the bond market, which in the U.S. alone currently amounts to $4 trillion in municipal bonds plus another $12 trillion in mortgage-backed bonds.
"For centuries, bond investing has boiled down to forecasting two things: which way interest rates are going to move and how likely a borrower is to repay its debts. A handful of startups are betting that to predict repayments in the future, bond analysts will need better data on something they’ve long overlooked—climate risk. The new firms are competing to design algorithms that can predict the likelihood of natural disasters hitting specific towns, industrial parks, even individual buildings, and how much damage they could do. That could become more relevant if wildfires, floods, storms and drought strike more frequently and with greater severity, creating potential new losses for holders of municipal, corporate and mortgage-backed debt. ... 'Eventually this chicken is going to come home to roost,' says the firm’s [risQ's] 34-year-old Chief Executive Evan Kodra.... Paradise, Calif., which was ravaged by the 2018 Camp Fire, disclosed in a March regulatory filing that one of its agencies may default on a $4.8 million bond next year. The town received $219 million from a settlement in 2020 but said it plans to use those funds to rebuild infrastructure instead. ... Over and over, risQ’s model showed that bond markets weren’t discriminating between municipalities with very different climate risk. A school district near California’s wine country has five times the wildfire property-damage risk of a school district a few hours north of Sacramento, for example, but their bonds trade at identical yields, according to risQ research." www.wsj.com/articles/high-tech-weathermen-forecast-climate-risks-for-bond-markets-11657461236 How much more are you, personally, willing to pay in higher food prices to tackle climate change? That is the essence of the question farmers, governments, and agribusiness are wrangling with in trying to figure out who should bear the costs of changes to farming practices that might rein in greenhouse gas emissions. www.nytimes.com/2022/07/09/business/farmers-climate-change.html
Climate Central is a US-based nonprofit using science, big data, and proprietary machine-learning mapping to identify coastal areas likely to be underwater or subject to frequent flooding by 2050. According to Climate Central's interactive map, hard-hit areas in Ireland are likely to be Dublin's waterfront and sections of southwestern Ireland, including Shannon's airport and parts of Limerick and County Clare. coastal.climatecentral.org/
Roughly 70% of Zimbabwe's population depends on agriculture for their livelihoods. Persistent droughts have already forced tens of thousands from their homes to rainier areas within the country, creating new domestic competition for water resources. By 2050, the World Bank expects climate change will produce 86 million internal migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. This article from MIT Technology Review looks at Zimbabwe as a case study in climate migration: www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/17/1041315/climate-migration-africa-zimbabwe/
Conservationists are trying to safeguard the region of the Arctic Ocean that will be the most likely to persist as frozen ice according to climate models. This Last Ice Area, as it is being called, stretches from northwestern Greenland into the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and may serve as a refuge for organisms that depend on sea ice, from polar bears to fish and crustaceans to microbes. www.sciencenews.org/article/arctic-last-ice-area-climate-change
Stronger-than-usual trade winds are shifting water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, creating a La Niña effect that is expected to influence weather patterns through the winter and into the spring. Because La Niña impacts vary with the location, check out the maps in this article to see what might be in store for you: www.wsj.com/articles/la-nina-is-coming-to-shape-winter-forecasts-what-to-know-11636666122
The world's tropical glaciers are melting away as air temperatures heat up. This article from Atlas Obscura introduces what was once the world's highest ski resort, with an elevation higher than Mount Everest's base camp. Chacaltaya Ski Resort, near La Paz, Bolivia, was closed in 2009 when the Andean glacier upon which it depended melted. www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-chacaltaya-ski-resort
Six U.S. states are now categorized entirely as experiencing drought -- California (most of which is under "extreme" or "exceptional" drought, the two most severe categories), Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah -- with 94% of the West experiencing drought conditions. This article from San Jose, CA's Mercury News includes not just the weekly drought map produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln but also maps that show streamflow and expected precipitation (spoiler alert: not much for the West) as well as discussing the impact on crops, hydropower, drinking water, fishing, bathing, and grazing land. www.mercurynews.com/2021/09/16/the-wests-historic-drought-in-3-maps-3/
I have shared this site before, but I think it's worth doing again. Ventusky feeds real-time data into its system to create interactive weather maps showing temperature, precipitation, wind speed, snow cover, and more. In the fall, because the Atlantic hurricane season continues through the end of November, Ventusky allows users to watch potential storm systems develop off West Africa and move across the Atlantic. www.ventusky.com/
A new study, from a team of human geographers, analyzed satellite imagery of 913 major flooding events around the world from 2000 to 2018 and then compared population estimates in these same locations and discovered the population in flood-prone areas has grown by up to 86 million people, 10x faster than previously thought. Much of the population growth in floodplains has been part of the rural-to-urban migration in the Global South. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/04/tens-millions-people-have-been-moving-into-flood-zones-satellite-imagery-shows/
Based on declining water levels in Lake Mead, the U.S. declared the first ever "Tier 1" water shortage on the Colorado River last week, a measure that will force cuts in water apportionment along the river, especially in Arizona. This article from Bloomberg CityLab considers the impact on Phoenix and Arizona in general.
"The state of Arizona has been in drought since 1994. In that time, its population has almost doubled to 7.2 million people as of 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The majority of that growth has been in Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal counties, which cover the area around and between Arizona’s two largest cities Phoenix and Tucson. Both cities — along with native tribes, farmers, and municipal and industrial users — draw a substantial portion of their water from the Central Arizona Project, a system of canals and aqueducts that carries water from the Colorado River, more than 300 miles to the northwest. ... With the announcement [of the Tier 1 shortage] came cuts to CAP’s water supply. Early next year, supply will drop 30%. ... Arizona is one of seven states in the Colorado River Compact, a water-sharing agreement that goes back nearly 100 years. Given the drought conditions, in 2007 the members adopted interim guidelines to clarify how they would share the shrinking amount of water. By 2019, those guidelines were no longer adequate, and the states adopted the Drought Contingency Plan, which established a series of triggers for water reductions based on levels in Lake Mead. Members of the Colorado River Compact are granted different levels priority access to water in the event of a shortage much the way loan- and bondholders get priority access to capital in the event of a bankruptcy. Not only is Arizona among the first group to see reductions, it will also see far greater reductions than other areas, at least initially. ... There’s a hierarchy of users within CAP, as well. Farmers—who represent just 1% of the state’s economy but use 74% of its water—will bear the brunt of the first cuts." www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-21/one-of-phoenix-s-main-water-sources-is-drying-up Wildfires in California, British Columbia, Europe, and North Africa regularly make the news. But wildfires burning in Siberia are bigger than all of the others put together. "Siberia is so vast that huge fires can burn without threatening any major settlements, transportation systems or infrastructure — but are still part of a swath of infernos that together are larger than all the other blazes around the world. On one level, the Siberian fires are part of an annual cycle. But many climate experts see the staggering scope of this year’s fires as another sign of greater fire risks on a warming planet that is potentially being made even hotter by huge carbon emissions from the blazes. Russia is fighting more than 190 forest fires in Siberia that have closed airports and roads, forced widespread evacuations and sent a pall of smoke across the North Pole. But it has abandoned dozens more fires covering thousands of square miles, with no effort to fight them. ... More than 8,600 [Russian] firefighters, agricultural workers, soldiers and other emergency workers are fighting forest fires that have burned more than 62,300 square miles since the beginning of the year, according to Greenpeace. That’s an area nearly twice the size of Austria. ... Last year, Russian fires burned 4.7 billion trees, seven times more than were planted, according to a Greenpeace study using satellite images. In one month, Russian fires emitted carbon equal to Sweden’s total carbon dioxide emissions for the year."
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/11/siberia-fires-russia-climate/ As we are already seeing, changes in the climate do not have the same impact across all regions. This geo-graphic from Statista summarizes the changes in key elements of physical geography -- precipitation patterns and temperature -- forecast in this week's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by region. www.statista.com/chart/25511/scientific-consensus-climate-change-patterns-world-regions
Occasionally one reads that climate change may benefit countries like Russia by delivering a longer growing season. However, this article from Geographical (UK) about the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, makes clear the issue is far more complex than that, especially as drought spreads on the steppe. geographical.co.uk/places/deserts/item/4101-the-republic-of-kalmykia-sits-at-the-forefront-of-global-climate-change-as-the-desert-encroaches
Extreme drought in the American Southwest has gotten most of the headlines, but this map from The Washington Post shows the severity of the problem in the northern half of the U.S. as well, in a nearly unbroken band from Minnesota to Washington and Oregon. (Map from www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/07/01/underpaid-firefighters-overstretched-budgets-us-isnt-prepared-fires-fueled-by-climate-change/.)
Long ago, Native American communities were moved to or allowed to exist in marginal lands, lands that Euro-American settlers, miners, or the U.S. government didn't particularly want. Those marginal lands are now proving to be particularly vulnerable to climate change. This article looks at the intersection of physical geography and human geography via the current impacts of climate-related changes on Native communities -- from rising waters and melting permafrost in Alaska to extended drought in the Southwest and the Ozarks to coastal erosion in the Pacific Northwest -- and the tricky question of who is supposed to "fix" the problem. www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/climate/climate-Native-Americans.html
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