This article discusses the impact of sea level rise on sewage treatment plants. Some coastal sewage treatment plants are beginning to experience challenges from climate change, such as backflow from seawater and potential discharge problems. Two experts explain how facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area are addressing these risks.
This articles discusses the evidence that sea level rise is accelerating.
Just recently, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a paper has been published that collects all the available satellite altimetry data and asks whether the sea level rise is accelerating. The authors of the paper are a well-respected team and include Dr. Steven Nerem from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and Dr. John Fasullo, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
While in any given year ocean levels may rise a bit or fall a bit, the authors focused on the long-term trend (the white line in the graph). They found that the long-term trend is, indeed, accelerating. The rate of acceleration is approximately 0.084 mm per year per year. That may not sound like much, but were this rate of acceleration to continue (a conservative estimate), the authors project that by the end of the century oceans with rise approximately 65 cm (more than two feet).
It is expected that by the year 2100, the ocean levels will rise a few feet by the end of the century. This matters a lot because globally, 150 million people live within three feet of current ocean levels. We have built our modern infrastructure based on current ocean levels. What happens to peoples’ homes and infrastructure when the waters rise?
This article talks about the impact of global warming on the Bay of Fundy and in the Gulf of Maine is as severe as anywhere on the planet, and it is having a significant impact on the biodiversity of these waters.
He cited studies that indicate the baseline temperature in the Gulf of Maine rose 0.03 degrees Celsius over the last 30 years, but in just the past decade, the waters have warmed at an alarming rate of 0.22 degrees C.
“The temperature change is so dramatic, and as a result we are seeing certain species in rapid decline, while others are on the increase,” Mr. Killorn said. “The data is significant. If this trend continues, we are going to have biodiversity more like the Chesapeake Bay than what this region has had in the past.”
This article discusses the alarms being raised by scientists over a rise in mass mortality events – when species die in their thousands. Is it all down to climate change?
There was almost something biblical about the scene of devastation that lay before Richard Kock as he stood in the wilderness of the Kazakhstan steppe. Dotted across the grassy plain, as far as the eye could see, were the corpses of thousands upon thousands of saiga antelopes. All appeared to have fallen where they were feeding.
The saiga – whose migrations form one of the great wildlife spectacles – were victims of a mass mortality event (MME), a single, catastrophic incident that wipes out vast numbers of a species in a short period of time. MMEs are among the most extreme events of nature. They affect starfish, bats, coral reefs and sardines. They can push species to the brink of extinction, or throw a spanner into the complex web of life in an ecosystem. And according to some scientists, MMEs are on the rise and likely to become more common because of climate change.
This article discusses how the Heartland Institute, a climate change denial organization, is launching an initiative to save the nation’s ailing coal plants. It amounts to the conservative response to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, which seeks to eliminate coal from America’s electricity mix.
Heartland plans to paint itself as an ally of consumers, arguing that electricity costs will soar if coal plants continue to retire at a rapid clip. Officials at the conservative think tank said they would enlist state lawmakers and regulators to prevent aging plants from retiring.
This article talks about the fact that global warming is affecting Europe and the North Pole. In what seems to be becoming an annual occurrence, temperatures at the North Pole are about to reach or possibly exceed the freezing point this week as the North Atlantic and the North Pacific Oceans inject unusually mild air into the Arctic.
Not coincidentally, Arctic sea ice is at record low levels, with a freak disappearance of ice off the western coast of Alaska, between Alaska and Russia. This vanishing of sea ice in the Bering Sea is exposing coastal communities in Alaska to storm surge flooding from typically fierce winter storms, particularly Little Diomede Island.
This article discusses how beech trees are becoming the dominate tree species in the northeastern United States as the climate changes, and that could be bad news for the forests and people who work in them, according to a group of scientists.
The scientists say the move toward beech-heavy forests is associated with higher temperatures and precipitation. They say their 30-year study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Applied Ecology, is one of the first to look at such broad changes over a long time period in the northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada.
This article discusses a federal court decision against the Trump administration’s attempts to unwind Obama-era restrictions on methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the Bureau of Land Management did not justify its decision to postpone core provisions of its 2016 Methane and Waste Prevention Rule.
This NY Times article talks about the measures taken after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans has built over 350 miles of levees, flood walls, gates and pumps to encircle it. Experts say that is not enough.
This article discusses the longstanding pollution problems caused by the Sabine Pass LNG Export Facility, currently the only liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in the country. It has reportedly been experiencing safety issues for the past decade, and yet federal safety officials were only informed of this history while investigating the terminal’s latest leak in January. Owned by Cheniere Energy, Sabine Pass is located on the Gulf Coast on the border of Texas and Louisiana.