Coastal Climate Extension

Well, it’s been a while!  I admit that keeping up with the blog has been harder than I expected it to be.  We’ve had quite a few things going on here at Sea Grant – we hosted the 2009 Sea Grant Climate Network (SGCN) workshop, “Climate Adaptation in Coastal Communities: A Network Approach to Outreach.” 

Attendees at the 2009 SGCN workshop eagerly await the start of the day's talks

Over 90 folks from Sea Grant and our invited NOAA partners attended the 2.5 day workshop, and at least another 45 people participated remotely through our webcast, generously sponsored by WebEx and run by Jim Hurley, Tom Dellinger, and the rest of the Wisconsin Sea Grant team.  The SGCN, a grassroots network within Sea Grant for any of us working on climate issues, also held its first business meeting.  I’m the chair of the SGCN Southeastern Regional sub-Group.  I’m also sharing co-chair duties for the entire network with Chris Conger of Hawai’i Sea Grant and Esperanza Stancioff of Maine Sea Grant.  Additionally, as part of the workshop the participants designed 5 projects with selected community partners.  Our SC project is to work with Dr. David Stoney, who leads the Kitchen Table Climate Study Group in McClellanville, a grassroots, community-based group dedicated to learning about climate change.  Our role will be towork with NOAA and other partners to pull together the latest scientific information about climate change and lists of resources and contacts that would make it easier for other groups to start their own Local Climate Study Groups.  I even got included as part of a write-up in the Charleston Post and Courier.  Beyond that, KTCSG has gotten recent press in the Georgetown Times and on WCIV-TV.  If you do Facebook, KTCSG now has a fan page, and I hope it will be a great way for you to stay posted on our progress.

I do mean to catch up on the “common climate questions” – especially because there’s been a certain e-mail related controversy for which I’ve received some requests for information.  Long story short – yes, long term climate change is still happening – but a lot of the email topics are good opportunities to talk about some confusing issues, such as the types of data climate scientists have available to work with.  That will have to wait until the New Year, though.  In the interim, Rob Emanuel with Oregon Sea Grant brought the December issue of the magazine Oceanography to my attention.  It’s dedicated to the issue of ocean acidification, and actually includes a primer by Scott Doney, William Balch, Victoria Fabry, and Richard Feely on what ocean acidification is, how it relates to climate change, and what resources are available for you to find out more.  It’s written in plain language (i.e., minimal jargon), and is probably much better than anything I could have written on the issue.  Even better, it’s open access, so you won’t need a subscription.  Check it out!

Happy holidays, and best wishes for the New Year.

An article in the Post and Courier, the daily newspaper for Charleston, SC, is causing quite a stir among their online readers. According to reporter Tony Bartelme, SC’s rate of carbon dioxide emissions has increased by 45% since 1990. This puts SC’s carbon emissions growth behind only Arizona and Colorado in terms of how fast we’ve been emitting carbon dioxide. Without access to the Post and Courier’s data and the methodology they used to do this emissions inventory, I can’t confirm how accurate their numbers are. However, I can go through the online comments on the article and address a few common misconceptions that are cited. I’ve decided to take advantage of this “teachable moment” to pick out a few things people were confused about in their comments, and post on each of them. So this week’s question is: “What’s been happening with global average temperatures over the last 10 years?”

Read the rest of this entry »

In the past two weeks, both North and South Carolina have had significant hurricane anniversaries.  On September 16, 1999, Hurricane Floyd came ashore at Cape Fear, NC, as a category 2 hurricane with winds of 105 miles per hour.  20 years ago tonight – midnight, September 22 - the eye of Hurricane Hugo passed directly over the Isle of Palms, bringing with it category 4 strength winds around 135-140 miles per hour.  So the past couple of weeks have been times of reflection, with those of us who had some experience reliving the tragedy and hoping that the stories instill a dose of caution into all of the folks who have moved to our shores in the last 10-20 years.  But the one thing that has been on everyone’s mind is the all-important question: could it happen again?

Category 3 hurricanes that passed within 75 miles of North Carolina (NOAA CSC, 2009).

Read the rest of this entry »

What a busy month! I got in a little vacation time, but more recently I’ve been on the road. First, last week I attended a meeting for several university researchers who have projects funded under the North Carolina Pilot Project portion of the Ecological Effects of Sea Level Rise (EESLR) Program, under NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research (CSCOR). Cool stuff, but this post is an attempt to be even more timely in addressing current events! At the beginning of this week, I was one of the instructors for the Center for Ocean Sciences Excellence in Education-Southeast (COSEE_SE) Ocean Sciences Education Leadership Institute, where a select group of middle school teachers, high school teachers, and informal educators are learning about teaching climate science and how climate changes in the short and long term affect the ocean and the Southeastern US. I had a lot of fun – and pulling together the presentations I gave is really going to help me out when I need presentations for my other extension efforts (if teachers liked it, I bet I’m safe showing it to municipal officials)! The OSELI goes through Friday, and I was hoping to get back up to Georgetown today for their discussion on how you know whether a climate resource is credible, along with activities on building communication between educators to support their climate teaching efforts. Alas, ’tis not to be. However, knowing that they’re all about to access this page in a couple hours, I want to pass along an interesting blog I just ran across that’s focused on climate credibility, among other issues. Climatesight.org is run by Kate, an aspiring climatologist in Canada. She’s put together a VERY interesting spectrum on judging the credibility of a climate source. In it, she’s very up front about where she falls on the credibility spectrum (bloggers don’t rate very high, except in a few rare cases), and admirably adjusts the content of her blog to avoid perpetuating “expert analyses” made by people who don’t really count as experts. On the Climatesight.org scale, where would you rank this blog’s credibility? Check it out! So welcome, OSELI’ers, and please feel free to comment on any post (even old ones) and let me know what you think!
Jess

This week, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) released its long-awaited report, titled Global Climate Change Impacts on the United States. You can click on the report cover image to read the NOAA press release, or access the report directly here.

2009 USGCRP Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States report. Photo credit: NOAA

It contains lots of good details on what some of the impacts of climate change may be on different regions and sectors in the U.S.  I’m still looking through the report myself, but thought I’d get the link up and set up a little background so you can do the same.

Read the rest of this entry »

OK, so I know I promised to catch up on stuff I did a couple of months ago, but this is too good to pass up for a quick post.  Last week, we had an all-hands meeting for the NC/SC climate extension team – so me, Bob Bacon (SCSG extension director), Jack Thigpen (NCSG extension director), and all the folks from CISA.  We met to talk about how the program is going and what we should do next, and at some point after lunch the talk turned to creative ways to reach coastal users.  It’s pretty well established in the scientific literature that the old model of distributing climate information – toss it out there, give a few workshops, and write a white paper or two – isn’t cutting the mustard for what decision makers need.  And in my travels in the Carolinas, I’ve had lots of folks tell me that all the back-and-forth in the media is confusing, and they feel they just don’t understand the science involved.  So in our meeting, we talked a bit about how to get basic climate information out there.  But how?  There are already lots of web sites, and of course now I get asked to talk at meetings and workshops.   Now, I’ve got the blog, too.  Clearly, it’s not enough – or it’s just not the right kind of information.  So I need your help – what are some new ways that we can start using to get you the basic information you want to know about climate?  A few of our ideas and other creative possibilities I’ve found after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Today is June 1, which means it’s the start of the Atlantic hurricane season (which runs through Nov. 30). By now, you may have seen the famous Colorado State University Atlantic hurricane season outlook calling for an average season. But wait – didn’t they say back in December that it would be slightly above average? A couple of months ago Accuweather released a graphic suggesting more activity for hurricanes that affect land northward of the Outer Banks and less activity from Charleston southward. The Weather Research Center has hurricane outlook graphics that give the Carolinas a 60% chance of a landfalling tropical storm or hurricane in 2009 – and a 70% chance in 2011! The National Hurricane Center says it’ll be an average season, but doesn’t say anything about the number of named storms that might make landfall in the US. If you’re finding yourself slightly confused about where all these numbers come from, then congratulations, welcome to the world of hurricane outlooks. 

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a funny thing, trust.  Without building a reputation in a community as a trusted source of information, a Sea Grant extension agent is pretty much sunk.  And I find that saying I work for SG gains me a little trust, now that I’ve started getting out into the community a bit more.  But what happens when you’re a SG extension (or education, or communications) professional whose sole purpose is to provide knowledge about an issue that many of your users don’t trust at all… like climate variability, and even more problematic, climate change?   Yep, welcome to my world.  And I know I’m not alone; I’ve had a few other SG folks e-mail me about communicating climate to people when it’s become such a political issue – when your scientific assessment of the assumptions made in a study gets you labeled as an alarmist or a denier, when you’re really neither?  So I’m having to give a little more thought to how I talk about climate.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was a bit more of a hiatus than originally planned, but the climate blog is back! If you’re coming in from the old address, you’ll notice quite a few changes. Needless to say the template is slowly getting tweaked as I learn WordPress (and if anyone has a good photo to use for a banner, preferably something with dunes and clouds, it would be much appreciated and come with public kudos). So the look will slowly change, and I’d love to hear any suggestions you have!
I’ve been quite busy over the last couple of months. I attended the National Sea Grant Academy training in February, and I’ve had advisory committee meetings in both states. Needs assessment interviews have started slowly but surely, and I gave my first big talk to a room full of users at the North Carolina Beach, Inlet, and Waterway Association Coastal Local Governments meeting. The first FAQ sheet has been published, and it’ll be up here as soon as I can figure out how to get it to work. The Sea Grant Climate Network has been established, with lots of help from Sea Grant programs in Hawaii, California, Oregon, Great Lakes (Michigan), and Maine. Oh yes, and that pesky dissertation is out of my hands, at least until May 6, when I defend it up at Penn State. So check back soon – I’ve got lots to catch up on, and I’m going to get back into my schedule of doing it at least once a week. Meanwhile, the weather in the Carolinas is great, except that we could really use a soaking rain to put out the rest of the Hwy. 31 fire in the Grand Strand. In the Charleston area we’ve had plenty of rain during April (even though most of it came during that storm on 4/2), but areas further up the coast toward the Grand Strand and southeast NC haven’t been as lucky – through 4/26, North Myrtle Beach has only gotten 1.26″ of rain for the month of April (that’s 0.94″ below normal) and Wilmington’s total so far is 1.67″ of rain (0.84″ below normal). In fact, the US Drought Monitor has much of the central and southern NC coasts classified as D0- meaning it’s abnormally dry. Our next significant chance for rain isn’t until the weekend, so keep your fingers crossed.

As per usual there’s lots of thought-provoking stuff out there. Recent posts from Andy Revkin’s NY Times Dot Earth blog, include some addressing whether or not the American Meteorological Society should have awarded their prestigous Rossby Research Medal to Dr. James Hansen of NASA. For those of you who don’t know Dr. Hansen’s work, he’s a climate scientist known for spending his free time advocating climate change mitigation policies. Revkin includes links to several posts from other bloggers debating whether the AMS did the right thing by honoring a scientist who also has a political identity. On Realclimate.org, the latest post discusses the implication of Susan Solomon’s recent research suggesting that some irreversible damage has occurred to the climate due to human activities. This isn’t news to scientists, but the study has made waves in the media and will inevitably lead some to argue that mitigation (reducing human-caused greenhouse gas emissions) isn’t worth the effort if some climate damage will occur anyway. As David Archer notes in the post, irreversible is not unstoppable, and he reminds us that mitigating greenhouse gas emissions will reduce the amount of climate damage to which we commit ourselves. And of course, there’s always Rob Emanuel’s updates on what’s going on with water in Oregon in his H2OnCoast blog. He’s got a bunch of links to water resource blogs that I encourage you to check out. So please, explore the observations and opinions of the many other climate-wise people out there in the blogosphere. I’ll expect a full report when I get back online.