Melissa Ross
This week Jacksonville University will hold an open forum called “What We Know and Don’t Know About Climate Change.”
It’s timely. Researchers reported in a new study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change that temperature swings associated with climate change can kill, and not just with heat waves.
Meanwhile, the expected effects of sea level rise on Florida’s thousands of miles of coastline are becoming a matter of increasing concern for climatologists in the Sunshine State and worldwide (not so much for the state DEP).
However, Jeremy Stalker, ocean geologist at JU, says implementing policy change around the issue of climate is difficult, because the state’s collision with rising seas is seen as something of a slow-moving disaster, attributed to incremental changes being observed over time.
“That’s the insidious way climate change works,” said Stalker, who is hosting the forum.
“The changes you see are gradual. The best analogy I have is, if you look at yourself in a mirror from one day to the next, you don’t see a whole lot of change from Tuesday to Wednesday. But if you look at a picture of yourself from 10 years ago, and a picture now, the differences are stark. And that’s sort of how climate works.”
That said, Stalker points out South Florida is already feeling the effects of rising waters.
“If you live in Miami, especially Miami Beach, it’s right in your front yard. They’re seeing floods now not just at high tide but also at regular high tide.”
And over time, what about the rest of the state?
“You’ll see beach erosion. Beach houses will start to see that as sea level rises, the sand they’re putting out to keep their houses in place will disappear.”
“Say you live in Atlantic Beach or Ponte Vedra, you’ll start seeing beach erosion in chunks. The sand will move. Those municipalities are built on a barrier island. That fixed beach is going to start disappearing. Water supply is another issue. Coastal cities that depend on groundwater will have to start looking further inland for their water scenarios,” he said.
And Stalker also touched on what’s known as climate’s “Doomsday Scenario,” one the Obama administration pointed to in its June report on climate (although some research shows learning about potential doomsday scenarios actually makes people less inclined to want to act on perceived climate threats.)
“That looks at how quickly the Greenland Ice Sheet or Antarctic Ice Sheet: We don’t know yet how quickly those things will disappear. In a scenario where we see those ice sheets collapse, that would result in sea level rise of close to 10 to 15 feet. That starts disappearing parts of downtown Jacksonville. The Doomsday Scenario sees significant chunks of Florida’s coastline, the Louisiana coastline, disappearing, and abroad, places like Bangladesh, the ocean starts to encroach on drier land.
“We need more information, but we do know that the Greenland Ice Sheet is disappearing. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing mass. The changes are moving toward more loss.”
Climate experts agree that the world’s overall temperature is headed up, but that doesn’t mean every place is getting steadily and predictably warmer. Climate change is making the weather more variable, causing hotter summers, colder winters in some places, and more severe storms.
Stalker said the forum will address those aspects and other ancillary effects of a changing climate.
“It’s going to be the indirect effects: the loss of food production, the loss of water resources for power, for drinking. Those secondary effects will be much more dramatic over time,” he said.
