Excursion 1: 12/11/2023
I watched one of SERC's videos in the Making Sense of Climate Change series called Global Warming, Rising Seas and Extreme Weather. He started the lecture by discussing the evidence behind anthropogenic climate change. Carbon dioxide is the highest its been in over 800,000 years and we know that its the cause of the current climate crisis because no other factor has changed enough to be causing it. Our atmosphere structure itself has also gotten thicker, which is telling that something has been added to the atmosphere. This thicker section is the piece that is warming up our earth, and this tells us that carbon dioxide is the problem and that it was due to human activity. Global warming is the cause of climate change since it is the warming of our atmosphere which then transfers to the ocean and the land, and causes more extreme weather conditions than ever before. He showed the instrumental record of global warming, which started in about 1750 and shows a strong increase in temperatures globally and became more dramatic around 1980. The change is not uniform however, its changing more in the north, in the winter, and overnight. This means that the sea ice in the arctic is going away really quickly, and this is due to albedo. Even though the snow and ice is 90% reflective, the arctic is surrounded by land and water which easily absorbs the heat and warms the surrounding area. This is why antarctica is not warming as fast as the northern sea ice.
This phenomena causes the larger issue of sea level rise since the arctic and greenland, which are melting at a faster rate, are full of ice which will then melt into the ocean. This is a huge threat to life the way we know it becuase the sea level rise could be up to 200 feet from the arctic melting alone. The actual expected sea level rise by 2100 is up to 6 feet, which is still incredibly dangerous. As the atmosphere warms, we get less snow, and then the land is left free to absorb more light because its not as reflective as snow. So, this process will continue to spiral and get worse once it starts. Worldwide, people rely on glaciers for drinking water and crop irrigation, so since they are melting so fast there will be an abundance of problems purely due to the loss of glaciers. He also highlights about 50 places worldwide that rely on a river delta which are in danger due to sea level rise, including Colorado and Mississippi. Additionally sea level rise threatens farms, especially those like rice fields because rice can’t grow with the salt that will come in from the ocean.
He then dives into extreme weather, and shows that there has been a large increase of extreme flooding in the DC area and Annapolis. The number of hurricanes hasnt increased but the severity of them has which is also due to sea level rise. One example being that Hurricane Sandy was the largest storm ever in the Atlantic. All of this climate change he discussed shows in the economy, specifically he discusses the ski industry and how banks have stopped funding it. The ski industry relies on snow falling, or else more money needs to be put into generators for snow but these are notoriously not as good. I found it very interesting that he agreed with what we talked about in colloquium about the polar bear being a horrible poster picture for the environmental movement and how they will likely never even go extinct.
I found this lecture both compelling and convincing. He cited many different organizations where he got his information from and credited reputable sources such as NASA and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He recommended that the audience check out more information about practuically everything he discussed, which showed that he based the lecture on pure scientific knowledge and research. There were several visuals which made the information easy to understand and digest, and his logic flowed and connected easily. He talked about a lot of general information about climate change, its proof, and the potential future we are looking at which correlated to everything I’ve learned so far in SGC. He would agree that we cannot deny that it is happening, and it is absolutely due to human actions which have affected the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. He showed us the same data that we’ve seen in class about the undeniable rise in temperatures globally on the instrumental record. He didn’t talk about anything about proxy records, which I learned about in SGC, but I didn’t find it made him any less reliable. He stated clear scientific facts from a variety of sources and built off of them collectively, so I found the lecture very trustworthy in terms of content.
Check it out here!
Excursion 2: 12/11/2023
I also watched an episode of The Chesapeake Bay Foundations’ Making Waves series called Throwing Shade: Heat Islands, Public Health, and Clean Water. Dr. Jeremy Hoffman started the lecture by showing the recent National Climate Assessments, a source I recognized as credible because we discussed them in class. He explained that the east coast will specifically suffer from longer allergy seasons and worse air quality due to the urban design of the DC area and heavy traffic flows. Several infographics are displayed showing the increase of extreme heat and related illnesses occuring for the residents of virgina correlated to that rise in temperatures. He talks about how cities are especially at risk because of the amount of architecture and impervious surfaces which cause worse runoff and don’t contribute to a tree canopy to create shade. The surface temperature in urban areas are significantly lower on the trees and native plants, while the concrete and non-native plants remain very hot.
He then dives into the concept of urban heat islands, where the surfaces in cities don’t absorb the heat and it warms up the air in the surrounding areas. He helped perform a study in Richmond, Virginia, to measure the exact temperature of all areas within the city at once. They made devices to measure the temperature at every second and had a team drive around the city. They found a 16 degree difference between the warmest and coolest areas in Richmand on the same day at the same time. The map of the hottest areas and coolest areas looked very similar to the map of the tree cover in Richmond, and showed the importance of trees to keep areas cool and safe for residents. The concerning fact for public health is that the wealth in Richmond is rather isolated into the cooler, safer areas. This means the people who have more resilience and access to healthcare and resources are in less danger from the extreme heat than the people who need it more. This is a serious public health concern and allowed them to determine the vulnerability of different areas in the same city based on these factors. Even the statistics of ambulance responses due to heat-related health problems lined up exactly with the hotter, more urban (more impervious surfaces), poorer areas of the city. If that wasn’t enough, these areas also completely correlated with redlined areas in the city, so there are distinct racial disparities as well.
They repeated the same study in Baltimore, DC, and Boston and the data was alarmingly consistent. This emphasized the importance of tree cover and more greenery in urban areas for air quality and public safety. Efforts to increase the tree canopy in these more urban, lower income areas have kickstarted in all of the cities. These urban heat islands are also rain islands, because extreme heat isn’t the only side effect of global warming. He even showed the plans that he helped make for where he works in Richmond to add a greenroof to a parking lot for more pervious surfaces. This is a green technology we talked about in class which has several benefits, including helping insolate the building its on and keep the surrounding area cool. They are also just generally adding more green space, which as he has proven will significantly improve the extreme heat and related health problems people are experiencing because of it.
I found this lecture convincing as well, but he didn’t come off as credible as he could have been. He doesn’t explicitly explain why the DC area and the east coast will suffer worse from other areas besides saying to read the National Climate Assessment, which occurred right at the beginning and left me with questions. He also didn’t state the science behind why the green space and tree cover cools down the area so much besides simply adding shade. While shade is important, its not contributing to the air quality in the way that perhaps photosynthesis is, and the science behind the extra benefits of trees could have been mentioned to solidify his solutions. Almost all of the data and findings he showed were done by him, which while it made him seem knowledgeable and proved his expertise, he might have benefited from showing corroborating outside sources. It was definitely a lecture about his work exclusively, which is great but doesn’t stand the best completely on its own. While I believed and followed everything he shared, it would be rather easy for skeptics or denialists to ask for corroborated information from someone or some organization other than his own research. He did show other people using the data he collected like the Department of Urban Resilience in DC, which showed that others trusted this data. Overall I felt his argument was well developed and displayed using all of the results of the related studies and I found the video compelling.