Scientific American - Storm Warnings: Climate Change and Extreme Weather

CLIMATE CHANGE AND EXTREME WEATHER

From the Editors of Scientific American
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Letters to the Editor
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ISBN: : 978-1-466824171

Introduction: Cloudy, with a Chance of Typhoon

Ask someone Hows the weather, and you may get a longer and more passionate response than you bargained for. The first three-quarters of 2012 brought the worst European winter in 25 years; massive flooding in Australia, Brazil and China; and in the US: a deepening drought affecting over 50% of the country on one hand and Hurricane Sandy inflicting massive damage to the Northeast on the other. If extreme events like these seem to be on the rise, its for apparent reason: the past several years have seen unprecedentedand costlyheat waves, droughts, blizzards, hurricanes, and floods. The likelihood of these extreme weather events are increasingly being tied to anthropogenicor manmade, mostly through overproduction of carbon dioxideglobal warming. Its no longer an abstract idea; its being felt locally, on every level.

To that end, weve created this eBook, Storm Warnings: Climate Change and Extreme Weather , to help you better understand whats behind climate change, what might be in store during the coming decades and how we can begin to reverse the detrimental effects mankind has had on the atmosphere. If we act now.

In the first several chapters we give you the latest on Hurricane Sandythe science behind it, the studies that predicted it, and what should be done to prevent it. Then Chapter 2 follows with in-depth stories on the science of extreme weather. John Careys three-part piece not only provides good reading, but also paints a frightening picture of whats in store for us when it comes to torrential rains, devastating floods, severe droughts and more. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss how glaciers and oceans are being affected. Especially noteworthy is Douglas Foxs shocking Witness to an Antarctic Meltdown".

Chapter 5 begins the discussion of what's causing these extreme events. It delves into greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on global warming. In an excellent piece, climatologist and leading expert in the field, James Hansen, breaks it down for us. He exposes the main culprits of global warming and then, how practical solutionstaken now, not laterwill help diffuse the global warming time bomb. Chapter 6 is devoted to the climate change debate. While its become practically impossible to refute evidence pointing toward humans contributions to directly affecting the Earths climate and increasingly frequent extreme weather events, skeptics remain. We address those here, with a fine piece by former long-time Scientific American editor, John Rennie.

Finally, our last two chapters focus on addressing and reducing the problems of climate change, many of which will persist long after the human race stops pumping CO2 into the air. From the first global climate change treaty signed in 1992, which addressed global warming and its effects on climate and biodiversity, its not been easy to convince countries to effectively reduce emissions. More political commitment and global cooperation is needed if we are to reach a future of sustainable energy by 2030 (dont miss this excellent piece by Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi). On the local level, however, simply making different choices can reduce an individuals carbon impact. Scientific American Editor David Biello lays out 10 solutions that include small changes we all can make in our daily livespractical, but effective, consumer choices that add up. It might be a drop in the bucket, but every drop counts.

-Jeanene Swanson
Book Editor

The Future According to Sandy

by Fred Guterl

We [seem to] have a 100-year flood every two years now, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says he told President Barack Obama during his tour of the damage from Hurricane Sandy. The remark is in the spirit of what climate scientists have been saying about the rise in extreme weather events, sea level rise and the vulnerability of New York and other coastal cities to flooding. The arrival of Sandy has, at least temporarily, focused peoples minds on climate change and its implications. Two studies in particularboth pre-dating Sandypaint a sobering picture of what the future might hold if worst-case scenarios of climate change come to pass.

The details in the first study on the kind of damage that a big storm could cause in New York eerily match what damage Sandy in fact did cause. The report, which was published by the Cuomo administration, is a hypothetical case study of how a 100-year stormthe kind of deluge that is supposed to occur only once every 100 years, which Gov. Cuomo refers towould play out. It includes maps showing extensive flooding of transport tunnels on the East River and Hudson River. With a two-foot rise in sea levels, the report says, flooding levels in the tunnels would have been five times worse.

The second report is a longer-range look at what might play out in the worst-case scenarios of rapid sea-level rise. Researchers in Germany and Holland focused on what a five-meter rise in sea level over the next century would mean to the cities of London and Rotterdam and elsewhere in Northern Europe. Five meters, consistent with a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is on the extreme end of what climate scientists expect over the next century, to say the least, but the report is intended more as a thought experiment in how societies would respond to sea level rise than as a climate prediction. Think of it as a visitation from the ghost of Christmas past.