[GWSG] 30% less melt; LA picks 3.3 feet of slr; FAU slr conference; my response to Regional Council call for info

[Tilley, Al]

1.  Mountain glaciers and ice caps have lost 30% less ice in 2003-10 than previously thought.  The study did not include Greenland or the Antarctic.   http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2012/0208/Ice-caps-not-shrinking-as-much-as-once-thought-new-data-show

2.  Louisiana has established a planning figure of 3.3 feet of sea level rise in the next century.  http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2012/02/louisiana_officials_establish.html

3.  Risk and Response: Sea Level Rise Summit, The Future of Florida and the Coast will convene in Boca Raton June 21-22.  It is coordinated by the Florida Center for Environmental Studies at FL Atlantic U.  The flyer features pictures of South Florida streets in normal state and under water at high tide.  http://www.ces.fau.edu/SLR2012?sid=54

4.  I have answered the Regional Council’s call for information pertinent to planning for climate change.  I thought some of the list members might be interested.  I know that some will think of things I have missed; I hope that they will either forward them to the Council or to me for transmission.  The Council’s link:  http://www.nefrc.org/FCV/FCV-Action-Item_Climate%20Change%20Info.htm

Climate Change Information Relevant to Planning for Northeast Florida

Climate Change in General
The best general introduction to climate change is Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers (New York: Grove Press, 2006).  It equips the reader to understand the issues discussed in technical literature.  The best general technical discussion of the topic is Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (revised and expanded edition), (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008), which has an extensive associated web site.

Regional Planning Resources
NOAA has provided a guide to regional climate planning:  http://coastalmanagement.noaa.gov/climate/adaptation.html    Georgetown Law has furnished a guide for governments wishing to adapt to sea level rise:  http://www.georgetownclimate.org/resources/adaptation-tool-kit-sea-level-rise-and-coastal-land-use

Two regional studies for Southeast Florida are available.  They deal with many of the issues which face our region.  The Miami-Dade Advisory Task Force on Climate Change has released its recommendations:  http://www.miamidade.gov/derm/climatechange/taskforce.asp
In December 2011 The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact released its report for public comment: http://www.southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/

Online databases for climate planning are being maintained at Florida Institute of Technology:   http://research.fit.edu/sealevelriselibrary/   and at Georgetown:  http://www.georgetownclimate.org/ . NOAA maintains a list of resources for climate planning for the Caribbean and the Southeast:  http://collaborate.csc.noaa.gov/climateadaptation/pages/scceocp.aspx  .

Sea Level Rise in Northeast Florida
Regional projections for precipitation and temperature rise (which are being refined) do not show Northeast Florida suffering great changes in this century, though they may be sufficient to threaten such significant elements as tree cover.   The climate change impact of greatest immediate local concern is likely to be sea level rise, with its threat to coastal property, infrastructure such as sewer systems and water and energy supply, the natural environment, and salination of the aquifer.  IPCC AR4 on North America:  http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter14.pdf

The two South Florida reports listed above use different figures for sea level rise, and other studies use yet different figures.  To an extent, sea level rise beyond midcentury will depend on the strength of mitigation efforts.  The IPCC uses a range of scenarios to cover likely courses of action.  A major factor in sea level rise projections is the contribution of polar ice sheets, especially Greenland and the West Antarctic.  A recent study by James Hansen and Makiko Sato concludes from a study of historical data that a rise of 16.5 feet this century could result from pursuing business as usual, rather than restricting carbon emissions (pages 14-17):  http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf

 The Miami-Dade Task Force strategy of using minimal figures as sea level rise projections (at least 1.5 feet by midcentury, at least 3-5 by the century’s end) makes some sense, but we may need to base planning on what we choose to be likely figures rather than minimum figures.  The Climate Change Compact uses lower figures furnished by the Army Corps of Engineers, 3-7 inches by 2030 and 9-24 inches by 2060: http://www.southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/documents/SLR.pdf  (Like the IPCC AR4, the Corps seems not to use contributions from the polar ice sheets in its projections.)  One lesson which might be derived from the sea level rise disagreements is that it is more significant to arrive at an understanding of the implications of a given level of sea level rise than to try to pin down exactly when that might happen, and plan to revisit the schedule periodically to apply new understanding, as the Southeast Florida Climate Change Compact proposes.

According to Orrin Pilkey and Rob Young, The Rising Sea (Washington: Island Press, 2009), barrier islands are exceedingly difficult, even impossible, to stabilize against sea level rise (Chapters 8 and 9).  Our coastal communities are on such islands.  (Pilkey and Young recommend a planning figure of seven feet of sea level rise this century.)

>From a look at the rough elevation figures for Florida south of Lake Okeechobee it is obvious that by about any responsible sea level rise projections which include the polar ice sheets that area will be inundated this century.  Northeast Florida has much more of a future.  High lands to the west of a line drawn from Hilliard to Palatka and a plateau running from Arlington south to below Palm Coast provide two stable locales for the immigration of communities.  Rough elevation figures:  http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Special:SeaLevel

Allen Tilley
atilley at unf.edu<mailto:atilley at unf.edu>
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