From Maple Syrup to Snow Pack, Global Warming Happening Here and Now

Heavy rains are becoming more intense and frequent all over the country, although annual rainfall is decreasing in the Southwest. Both make it more difficult to manage water supplies for crops and communities.

Winter snow pack is decreasing, and melting off earlier in the year, in the West and Pacific Northwest. This is putting stress on fish that depend upon cold, ample stream and river flows for spawning; making hydroelectric power generation more difficult; and imperils fresh water supplies for people and agriculture.

Warmer winter temperatures have pushed the nexus of winter maple syrup production northward, from Vermont into Canada.

A new report released today by the federal government's affirms that the effects of global warming are being felt across the United States, affecting us in all sorts of everyday ways that may seem unconnected, but add up to big shifts in our quality and way of life.

As for how the impacts of global warming will intensify in coming years, there's a lot that's uncertain, because we don't know if human-caused emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases will rise or be reduced. Although no experts are saying that things will change for the better, they're united in recommending that sooner we cut human-propelled greenhouse gas pollution (from burning fossil fuels, industrial-scale agriculture, deforestation, and other causes), the better our chances of blunting global warming's worst impacts.

This report is a synthesis of research that's been developed and reviewed over the past decade in different sectors of the scientific community, and so contains no new science. But in taking a tight focus on how global warming is already changing the US (rather than taking a global view), researchers hope it will bring the situation -- and the need to act right away -- home to Americans, who generally feel that climate change is a problem happening in far off lands, in the far off future.

“What we would want to have people take away is that climate change is happening now, and it’s actually beginning to affect our lives,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a principal author of the report. “It’s not just happening in the Arctic regions, but it’s beginning to show up in our own backyards.” (The New York Times)

In the Northeast, where I live, the annual average temperature has increased by 2°F since 1970; winter temperatures have risen twice as much. (Which is perhaps why my snowshoes have gathered dust in the basement for most of the past several winters.) And more:

Warming has resulted in many other climate-related changes including more frequent very hot days, a longer growing season, an increase in heavy downpours, less winter precipitation falling as snow and more as rain, reduced snowpack, earlier break-up of winter ice on lakes and rivers, earlier spring snowmelt resulting in earlier peak river flows, rising sea surface temperatures, and rising sea level.

These trends are projected to continue, with more dramatic changes under higher emissions scenarios compared to lower emissions scenarios. Some of the extensive climate-related changes projected for the region could significantly alter the region’s economy, landscape, character, and quality of life.

Living in a coastal metropolis, I can look forward to higher ocean levels impairing, if not destroying, the local sewage system, unless New York City takes a cue from Boston Harbor’s Deer Island sewage plant, which has been raised to avoid destructive impacts from future sea-level rise. We're already having more heat waves, and can expect more and worse flooding of low-lying areas of the city, and changing offshore ocean currents that in turn effect nearer-shore ecosystems (among other changes).

Experts from 13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes, overseen by the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy, contributed to the report, online at globalchange.gov.

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Image credit: National Weather Service