Green A City

Water on the brain: 4th Annual CA Climate Change Conference

By Ken Ott, Research Associate, SustainLane
Sustainability research, Government Division

I rode Amtrak to the 4th Annual California Climate Change Conference in the state capitol on Tuesday, September 11th. By doing so, I enjoyed nice views of the San Francisco Bay and farmland in between the two cities. I also read more about the event before arriving.

This was my first California Climate Change Conference and it was a nice refresher course, in addition to a source for reams of new information which I still haven't finished reading. The California Energy Commission and California Resources Agency put on this conference and are the state's primary policy and planning agencies for energy and natural resources, respectively.

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I'd like to share what I learned at the morning session on water in this post. Instead of merely reading about climate change issues, in contrast, it was great to speak with panelists and other attendees in person. Although magazines or online articles can be important resources, there is no substitute for conversation and one-to-one dialogue.

The morning panels focused on probable climate change impacts such as: water (flood risk and mitigation) and air quality (soot effects on snow melt rates). I was able to listen to and speak with a great number of people who are experts in their fields.

Some of them included Michael Dettinger, Scripps Institution of Oceanography who works on observing increased flood vulnerability, and Sam Earson, Desert Research Institute, who studies groundwater supply issues, using gas tracers. All of the panelists do good work and contribute to a greater  understanding of climate change issues as they affect the Western US as well as the global community. All of them are supported by state agencies or deparments and in turn report back to these bodies.

Below are synopses of most speakers' presentations with their respective conclusions as well as mine. If you are already knowledgeable in general you can skip my commentary and just read the indented text boxes. These contain much of my verbatim notes. You can also attend the sessions virtually. Sessions are archived in PDF and streaming audio/video for your convenience: Conference Home.

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CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATER RESOURCES IN CALIFORNIA
Session Chair: Jamie Anderson (California Department of Water Resources)

The early morning sessions were well attended and very clear in assigning further certainty to likely extreme weather events in the future. The main culprit in all cases was a human induced warmer biosphere. 

“California Flood Risks in a Changing Climate”
Michael Dettinger of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography presented a model in which a global climate +3 degrees Celsius warmer leads to “flood friendly” conditions in California and along the entire West Coast. These conditions include increased winter snow melting and a stronger phenomenon of “Atmospheric Rivers.”

West coast more likely to get more rain
More rain than snow
Double area of rain --> double flooding
Additional winter melting: much wetter soils in northwest, slightly drier soils in CA --> but doesn't reduce flood risk
"atmospheric rivers" -- the storms to worry about. warm pacific storms.
"pineapple express" -- source of big storms/floods
More flood risk: rain rather than snow; wet snows & soils; more large storms; need to have better flood management through increase observation of snow, weather patterns...

Michael Dettinger gives his presentation. Click for larger photo.

Hurricane Dean May Menace Energy Supply

Hurricane Dean will enter the Gulf of Mexico is some form next week, which doesn't bode well for the nation's energy supply or for Texas Gulf Coast cities bailing out from record rain and flooding.

The now Category 3 storm is likely to be fast-moving, powerful and devastating, especially if it hooks north of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, which the latest tracking estimates forecast. The more the storm remains over the warm open waters of the Gulf, the greater likelihood of continued strength.

For those in the Brownsville-Galveston, Texas region, close attention should be paid to hurricane forecasts. New Orleans, Houston and inland areas should be on alert as well.

Monday futures markets will begin to speculate on Dean's impact on the national energy prices and supply. The true impact not be known mid-week, when Dean comes ashore on the northeast mainland of Mexico or on the the US Gulf Coast. Oil and natural gas production facilities in the Gulf, in refineries lining the coast, or in Houston, where petrochemical centers are based, may suffer damages that would either be difficult to quickly access or assess.

Besides filling up that car this weekend, if you hang your hat with state or local government agencies, consider the impacts of fossil fuel scarcity on the budgets and operations of state and local government agencies.

Hopefully, next week won't prove to be a baseline event akin to Katrina and Rita in 2005, but it may prove to be a very real energy risk model.

Before the Flood? Economic Risks and How to Prepare

Ocean levels have been consistently rising in the United States, so maybe people should reconsider buying that beachfront second home, right?

 

It turns out the rising ocean levels have many more implications on the US economy, particularly in regions such as California, according to eye-opening new studies cited in a series in The Contra Costa (California) Times.

Studies show ocean levels have risen seven inches off the California's Golden Gate in the past century, after rising about two inches per century since the last ice age. With melting glaciers and ice caps throughout the world, the rate of sea-level rise is accelerating in the upper range of what has been previously predicted.

 

California has been mapping since the fall how these rising sea levels, which are likely to accelerate even more with continued global warming, will impact everything from the state's water supply to its transportation infrastructure. It turns out that if the upper limit of ocean levels is reached as projected by the end of this century, portions of cities and virtually the major Bay Area airports in San Francisco and Oakland would be under water.

Storms, which contribute powerful tidal surges, would only make matters worse. Currently California faces less damage to coastal flooding than do states along the Atlantic and Gulf Coast, markets where insurers have been pulling out of because of heavy recent hurricane-induced flood losses over the past years.

Policy to address global climate change, such as California's historic carbon emission-reducing AB 32, is a smart way to begin to mitigate major potential risks to the US economy from rising sea levels. California's coast and low-lying areas include much of the state's most valuable real estate along with its most valuable financial and high-tech industry centers.

Even the Pentagon is concerned about the implications that global warming-induced flooding may have for our national security. In fact, it was a Department of Defense-commissioned study in early 2004 conducted by the Global Business Network  that helped to convince California state officials of the very real economic and security threat that global climate change represented.

So the Pentagon and the state with the largest population and economy are projecting global climate change-induced scenarios that may change our lives dramatically over the coming decades.

Should we take global climate change seriously, or do we continue to do business as usual until our ability to do business will be abruptly halted, as it was with Hurricane Katrina?

Alberto to hit Tampa

The first tropical Atlantic storm of the year, Alberto, looks to be heading right for Tampa-St. Petersburg. The  NOAA site is predicting up to 8 inches of rain over the next five days for central Florida. This is the best precipiation forecast out there, and people in Tampa-St. Pete should take flooding risk seriously. Winds are not as much of a threat. But check this precip forecast image. Read it like a topographic map: that brown ring centered like a bullseye on St. Pete is the eigth-inch forecast area and each ring outward is one inch less.  Orlando looks like it will get about six inches and Jacksonville and Daytona Beach should get about five.

SustainLane will be releasing its natural disaster risk ranking for US cities next month--you can check it out now. Tampa-St.Pete are not included, as neither is in the largest 50 US cities, but if they were, you can bet they would rank in the mid to upper forties range out of the largest 50 US cities for hurricane/flooding risk.