[GWSG] The 1.5C goal; a committed campus?; committed sea level rise; Jacksonville attempts a new wetland; the city that never drains

[Tilley, Al]

1. Reaching a goal of 1.5C of human-caused warming reasonably means that we will exceed that goal from time to time as volcanoes erupt or El Niños form, and as we bobble up and down around the mean. Achieving the goal should maintain us above it half the time, and half the time below it. Awareness of the nature of the goal leads to protection from shallow pessimism and allows a more accurate estimation of our remaining carbon budget. https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-interpreting-paris-agreements-1-point-5-c-temperature-limit



2. The faculty of the U of Wisconsin-Madison have unanimously passed a resolution to ask the campus to commit to climate action and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 or earlier. The campus is already on track to achieve 40% renewable energy by 2030. http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/university/uw-madison-faculty-ask-campus-to-commit-to-climate-action/article_6f5f69b1-c187-5a69-8a59-1049d9f7e3ba.html



3. An article in PNAS estimates that current emissions levels lock in sea level rise of 4.3-9.9 meters by the century's end (though the actual rise may take much longer). Sensitivity of sea level rise to warming is greater by an order of magnitude that has usually been assumed. It is possible to reduce future committed sea level rise by reducing emissions now. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/44/13508

The article was published two years ago but just came to my attention. The recent news that Totten Glacier in the East Antarctic is unstable could only render the projections more severe. The article arises largely from the discovery in 2015 that the West Antarctic is unstable.

The article ignores the effects on the US East Coast of the slowdown of the AMOC, and was written before the gravitational impact of Antarctic melt on the US East Coast was known. We are in need of a fully informed timeline of sea level rise.



4. Jacksonville, FL, is attempting a buyback of homes in South Shores, a neighborhood flooded by Hurricane Irma. The goal is to establish a new wetland area. Results so far are mixed. http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2017-11-04/answer-flooding-woes-jacksonville-plans-buy-out-offer-southside-neighborhood



5. The Tampa Bay Times called Jacksonville "the city that never drains." We need to do studies of our vulnerability to flooding (and other climate woes, such as salination of our water supply, degradation of local food sources, health hazards, and interruption of transportation) so that we could plan courses of corrective and ameliorative action.  http://project.tampabay.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/2017/investigations/jacksonville-never-drains-hurricane/?

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