Climate

Dr. Michael D. McDonald, Coordinator, Global Health Response and Resilience Alliance - St. Petersburg College - Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

Though the Tampa Bay area is ranked as the nation’s second-highest at-risk metropolitan area from climate change effects, it can thrive during the decades of rapid changes ahead by becoming a leader of the rapidly emerging Blue-Green economy. Tampa Bay has a set of extraordinary opportunities in the management of health, human security, and prosperity not only for its 3.5 million residents, but also as a model for how urban areas can face the challenges of sea level rise and broader climate change. The speaker will discuss how the region’s already well-established record for sound policy, adaptive markets, climate-smart infrastructure, compassion and social equity represents a foundation for transformation into a formidable force for resilience. He will explain how the diversion of trillions of dollars from petroleum-dependent industries into transformative climate resilience initiatives represents a new world of opportunities to forge a bright climate-resilient future for the region.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Union of Concerned Scientists - Underwater - Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate (28 page .PDF document)

ucsusa.org - June 2018

Sea levels are rising. Tides are inching higher. High-tide floods are becoming more frequent and reaching farther inland. And hundreds of US coastal communities will soon face chronic, disruptive flooding that directly affects people's homes, lives, and properties.

Yet property values in most coastal real estate markets do not currently reflect this risk. And most homeowners, communities, and investors are not aware of the financial losses they may soon face.

This analysis looks at what's at risk for US coastal real estate from sea level rise—and the challenges and choices we face now and in the decades to come.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Outside the small village of Chicua, in the western highlands, in an area affected by extreme-weather events, Ilda Gonzales looks after her daughter.

newyorker.com - by Jonathan Blitzer - Photography by Mauricio Lima - April 3, 2019

. . . In most of the western highlands, the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when. “Extreme poverty may be the primary reason people leave,” Edwin Castellanos, a climate scientist at the Universidad del Valle, told me. “But climate change is intensifying all the existing factors” . . . Farming, Castellanos has said, is “a trial-and-error exercise for the modification of the conditions of sowing and harvesting times in the face of a variable environment.” Climate change is outpacing the ability of growers to adapt.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

A neighbor takes photographs of a boat smashed against a car garage, deposited there by the high winds and storm surge from Hurricane Florence, along the Neuse River, Sept. 15, 2018 in New Bern, North Carolina. - (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates

weather.com - by Sean Breslin - February 8, 2019

Hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin are exploding into monster storms at a rapid pace more and more often, and climate change is one reason why, a new study has found.

Published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, the findings compiled by a team of hurricane experts – several of whom work for NOAA – concluded that rapid intensification is happening more often than it should.

The result can be a hurricane that grows from a relatively tame Category 1 to a massive Category 4 or 5 storm, the most recent example being Hurricane Michael, which ravaged the Florida Panhandle last October (the Gulf of Mexico is included as part of the Atlantic Basin).