Climate Code Red: Climate change pushing floods, cyclones to new extremes, with worse to come

by David Spratt, Climate Code Red, April 1, 2017

With Australia experiencing the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie and record-breaking rains and severe flooding in southeast Queensland and along the north coast of New South Wales, here’s a look at how global warming has, and will, push floods and cyclones to new extremes.

Flooding extremes

Warm air can be more humid than cold air, that is, it can hold more water vapour in absolute terms. And atmospheric water vapour content increases 7% for each 1-degree-Celsius increase in global average temperature, establishing the conditions for more intense rainfall events. 

Flash floods are likely to sweep across the Australian landscape with increasing intensity, particularly in urban or residential areas. Peak rainfall is predicted to soar with rising surface temperatures as Australia experiences ever greater extremes of heat.  

The frequency of major flood events (defined as events which caused extensive flooding within 50 kilometres of the coast, or inundation that extended 20 kilometres along the coast) along Australia's eastern seaboard has doubled in last 150 years, with climate change one of the possible factors, senior Bureau of Meteorology researchers say. 

Record-breaking heavy rainfall and a clear upward trend in downpours over the last 30 years fits in with global temperature rise caused by greenhouse gases. Statistical analysis of rainfall data from 1901 to 2010 around the globe, shows that from 1980 to 2010 there were 12% more of these intense events than would be expected in a climate without global warming. Wet regions generally saw a bigger increase in deluges and drier regions a smaller one. In southeast Asia, the observed increase in record-breaking rainfall events is as high as 56%.

Giant air streams pushing new extremes: The increase of devastating weather extremes in summer, including floods, is likely linked to human-made climate change, mounting evidence shows, with the recent discovery of giant airstreams circling the Earth, waving up and down between the Arctic and the tropics. These planetary waves transport heat and moisture. When these planetary waves stall, droughts or floods can occur. Warming caused by greenhouse-gases from fossil fuels creates favourable conditions for such events.

 “The unprecedented 2016 California drought, the 2011 U.S. heatwave and 2010 Pakistan flood, as well as the 2003 European hot spell, all belong to a most worrying series of extremes,” says Michael Mann, a lead author of the study. “The increased incidence of these events exceeds what we would expect from the direct effects of global warming alone, so there must be an additional climate change effect. In data from computer simulations as well as observations, we identify changes that favour unusually persistent, extreme meanders of the jet stream that support such extreme weather events. Human activity has been suspected of contributing to this pattern before, but now we uncover a clear fingerprint of human activity.”

Attribution studies show how the risk of a particular event may have changed due to the human influence on climate. Some attribution results surveyed by the World Meteorological Organisation include:

• The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined that human-caused climate change increased chances of the fatal and record rains in Louisiana by at least 40% and could have nearly doubled the odds of such a storm.
• A scientific analysis of devastating 2014 floods in the United Kingdom, which cost an estimated $646 million in insurance losses, found that human-caused climate change has increased the chance of the extreme rain event by 43%.
• In May–June 2016, portions of northeast France received 6 full weeks of rain in 24 hours. A formal attribution study released June 9, 2016, found that such extreme rains are at least 40%—and as much as 90%—more likely in some areas of France.

Cyclone extremes

Cyclones, in part, draw their energy from the temperature of the ocean's surface waters, so a warming climate and ocean puts more energy into storms, including cyclones, loading them with more rainfall, and stronger winds pushing more of a storm surge.
The recent Climate Council brief notes, “Increasing temperature of the surface ocean affects the intensity of cyclones, both maximum wind speeds and in the intensity of rainfall that occurs in association with the cyclone.”  The force exerted on buildings and structures when cyclones make landfall increases disproportionately with wind speed.

The Council also notes that: “Tropical cyclones form most readily when there are very warm conditions at the ocean surface and when the vertical temperature gradient through the atmosphere is strong. As this vertical gradient weakens as the climate continues to warm, it is likely that fewer tropical cyclones will form.”

Whilst the best evidence scientists have suggests cyclones are unlikely to increase in number, a 2013 study challenges the status quo, suggesting they will occur more frequently, as well becoming more intense. 

In 2013, researchers reported that the stronger hurricanes in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, and South Indian Oceans have become more intense.  The same year, the UN meteorological agency concluded that climate change is making super typhoons worse. 

In 2015, an international research team found that a warming planet is already stoking the intensity of tropical cyclones in the northwest Pacific, and their ferocity will continue to increase even with moderate climate change over this century.

More broadly, a 2010 study found that "future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100...higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre.

Recent records

With sustained wind speeds of more than 310 kilometres per hour, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013 was the most powerful tropical cyclone to make landfall in recorded history. The previous record was held by Hurricane Camille, which in 1969 hit the state of Mississippi with wind speeds of just over 300 km/h. Data compiled from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows sea temperatures were about 0.5–1.0 degree Celsius above normal in the waters to the east of the Philippines as Haiyan began forming. The waters cooled in the storm's wake, an indication of how the storm sucked up energy.   

Hurricane Patricia which hit Mexico in October 2015 achieved a record peak intensity with maximum sustained winds 345 km/h, making it the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the Western Hemisphere, and the strongest globally in terms of 1-minute maximum sustained winds. Cyclone Winston in February 2016 was the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in Fiji and the South Pacific Basin in recorded history.

Attribution studies 

• Superstorm Sandy which hit the northeast coast of the USA with devastating effect in October 2012 was made worse by unusually warm waters which increased the hurricane’s intensity. As well, human-caused sea level rise added to the storm surge, and on the stretch of the Atlantic Coast that spans from Norfolk to Boston, sea levels have been rising four times faster than the global average. Researchers say that “It is possible that subways and tunnels may not have been flooded without the warming-induced increases in sea level and storm intensity and size.”  More broadly, the authors say that “‘snowmaggedon’ in February 2010, superstorm Sandy in October 2012 , supertyphoon Haiyan in November 2013, and the Boulder floods of September 2013 were all influenced by high sea-surface temperatures that had a discernible human component.
• The Climate Council reported that climate change exacerbated the damage caused by Cyclone Pam, which left a trail of destruction across Vanuatu in 2015.

Damage 

Reinsurance giant, MunichRe, says that "nowhere in the world are weather risks changing faster than in Eastern Asia," and concludes that "as a result of climate change... the intensity of typhoons will increase" in Eastern Asia.  On 11 November 2013, in the aftermath of super-typhoon Haiyan, MunichRe surveyed losses:

Eastern Asia has been hard hit by weather-related loss events in the past three decades. Their number has increased by more than a factor of four, causing overall losses from weather-related events of some US$ 700bn during this period. The insured losses of US$ 76bn amounted to only around 10% of overall losses, with 62% of these attributable to Japan. Floods caused 56% of the overall losses in Eastern Asia, but only 30% of insured losses. The number of floods has increased strongly and is expected to increase further in the coming decades. With insured losses of US$ 16bn, the 2011 Thailand floods caused the biggest-ever weather-related insured loss in the region. After floods, it is typhoons that cause the greatest weather-related losses. New analyses indicate a clear cycle of activity for typhoons, and increased typhoon activity is expected over the coming years..."

And in Australia, The Age reports that new modelling has shown that a cyclone the size of Debbie could have catastrophic consequences on the Gold Coast and as far as Brisbane, with winds of 260km/h, in areas where many homes and towers do not meet cyclonic safety standards. As climate change pushes cyclones further south, tens of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure is at risk. Actuaries, who predict and model scenarios for banks and insurers, have warned properties could become "uninsurable" as premiums rise up to 250% to meet this global warming challenge.

http://www.climatecodered.org/2017/04/climate-change-pushing-floods-cyclones.html

Sea Level Rise: Sell homes in Portsmouth South End now says Cameron Wake, professor at University of New Hampshire

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  Cameron Wake, professor of climatology and glaciology at the University of New Hampshire, said Portsmouth homeowners in low-lying areas in the South End consider selling their houses now. Photo by Ioanna Raptis/Seacoastonline
  

  

  
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• by Deborah McDermott, SeaCoastOnline.com, March 23, 2016

PORTSMOUTH — People who live in a low-lying area of the city like the South End should consider selling their house — “and I’m not kidding,” said Cameron Wake, University of New Hampshire professor of climatology and glaciology.

If there is a big coastal storm like Hurricane Sandy, “those houses are at risk of flooding” today. And it won’t get any better in the years to come, as sea levels inevitably continue to rise.

“My recommendation is why deal with the headache? Sell now while you can still get money out of the home,” he said.

As for Hampton Beach, he said, the town’s move toward making the beach a 5-star resort area is misguided at best. “Hampton Beach is so at risk, so vulnerable, so exposed” that it makes no economic sense to continue on that path.

Wake spoke to the Herald editorial board Wednesday, in advance of his talk next week at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth. He said sea level rise from climate change is occurring now and its trajectory is inevitable. The question is how quickly will we curtail human activities that contribute to global warming?

Will carbon emissions continue unabated at current levels — in which case sea levels could rise as much as 6 feet in the next 80 years, leaving Hampton Beach, Strawbery Banke Museum, Portsmouth Middle School and South Mill Pond homes in Portsmouth under water? “I don’t mean to be hyperbolic here, but that’s the picture,” said Wake.

Or will there be a serious and immediate commitment to reducing carbon emissions by systemically investing in renewable energy sources, weaning off high carbon use, implementing energy efficiency measures and instituting a carbon tax? In the most optimistic case, then, sea levels would rise 2 feet over the next 80 years, “something we can adapt to, something we can survive.”

Wake sees reasons for optimism amid concerns that the planet could be facing “a whole suite of nasty surprises” in the future — including the possibility of more accelerated melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets than had previously been anticipated. Former NASA scientist James Hansen in a study released this week predicted even if the Earth warms by a modest 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 — as agreed to by the nations of the world in Paris last December — it will be too warm to stop the sheets from melting. That would cause sea levels to rise quickly and precipitously, the study argues.

“The conversation we’re not having is the conversation Jim Hansen wants us to have,” said Wake. “We had to get over the denial, and we’ve done that. Now we need to take a hard look at where we go from here.”

Wake was asked what number he would assign the world today, if zero was the worst carbon pollution possible and 10 was the perfect climate world.

“I think we’re at about a 1," he said. "The developed world needs to be carbon neutral by 2050. We need to get to 10 really quickly,” he said, and then help developing countries reach that goal in the decades to follow. “But when you look at the rate of change today, we’re headed in the right direction.”

That’s where the optimism comes in, he said. It’s become clear in recent years that a solution to global warming is becoming cost effective, he said. The cost of wind and solar has come down, for instance.

“We can see a pathway to a clean energy revolution that wasn’t there before. The tipping point is where capital, interest and technology all meet. I’m optimistic because solutions line up with profit motives,” he told the Herald last December.

He likened it to the Internet. Early on, comparatively few people used the Internet, but then it reached the same critical mass “and took off exponentially. That same exponential curve is happening now” with renewable energy.

In order for this trajectory to continue, people need to incorporate changes in their personal lives, and begin demanding their elected leaders from town hall to Congress deal with this issue. “Once politicians hear from many people, I think they will start to get much more serious.”

While there are many challenges ahead, he said, he said “it’s not too late. There is an amount of climate change we are going to have to adapt to. We have already committed to a warmer world. But if we can act now, in the next decade, and the developing world in the next two or three decades, I do think we can salvage this.”

http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20160323/NEWS/160329641 

Kevin Trenberth: Human influence on extreme climate events is greater than conventional analyses suggest

News Release Summary for Trenberth et al. Nature Climate Change paper.

Human-caused climate change is making many weather and climate extremes more frequent and/or intense.

The conventional approach to extreme event attribution tends to underestimate the human influence. A new paper “Attribution of climate extreme events” by Kevin Trenberth and colleagues in Nature Climate Change suggests that addressing this problem lies, in part, in separating atmospheric dynamics from thermodynamics.

Atmospheric dynamics deals with the phenomena and their development and movement; they are short-lived and inherently unpredictable. Indeed, extreme weather events are by their nature always unique. On the other hand, thermodynamics involves changes in temperature and temperature extremes, and the associated changes in atmospheric moisture vapor that lead to more intense rains and flood risks, as well as droughts in which the extra heat from increased greenhouse gases accumulates. For these larger thermodynamic influences, more reliable and useful statements can be made about the role of human-caused climate change in extreme events.

Thus, a more robust and societally relevant approach to extreme event attribution is to look at how the impacts of particular events were affected by observed changes in the environment where they develop: the air and sea surface temperature, sea level, and atmospheric moisture content.

The paper notes that sea-surface temperatures have increased by about 0.6 °C or 1 °F globally since the 1950s due to human-caused warming. Atmospheric moisture associated with this increase has risen by about 5%. Global sea level has risen by about 19 cm or 7.5 inches, with regional variations. These factors play a key role in feeding moisture into storms, intensifying them, causing heavy rains, and amplifying storm surges. Among the several examples discussed in the paper are these two:

In October 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, for example, high sea-surface temperatures were responsible for greatly increasing the storm’s strength (as measured by storm depth and wind speed) and for increasing precipitation by 35%. Even if just a third or a half of the increased sea-surface temperature is attributable to human-caused warming, then the storm surge and associated damage was considerably influenced by climate change. Indeed, the subways and tunnels might not have flooded without the warming-induced increases in sea level and storm intensity and size, putting the price tag of human-caused warming on this storm in the tens of billion of dollars.

In the Boulder floods of September 2013, extremely high sea-surface temperatures off the west coast of Mexico, and the associated record atmospheric water vapor amounts that flowed into Colorado as a result, were instrumental in the event, and it probably would not have occurred without human-caused warming. Such an increase in atmospheric water vapor becomes concentrated when focused by topography, as it did in Boulder, and further amplified on the ground as water drains into channels and rivers. This suggests an important role for human-caused warming in those Boulder floods.

In summary, the paper emphasizes that the climate is changing. We have a new normal. The environment in which all weather events occur is not what it used to be: all storms, without exception, are different. Even if they look like ones we used to have, they are not the same. The most useful way to evaluate the effects of human-caused warming on extreme events is to focus on the influences of the changed large-scale thermodynamic environment on the extremes of temperatures and moisture associated with the event.

Joe Romm: Florida’s Climate Denial Could Cause Catastrophic Recession

Miami streets see heavy flooding from rain in September 2014. Some neighborhoods flood regularly during deluges or extreme high tides. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/LYNNE SLADKY

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, March 30, 2015

Governor Rick Scott (R-FL) has made Florida the punchline for countless jokes since we learned in early March he barred state officials from using the term “climate change.” As Jon Stewart joked last week holding a copy of “Roget’s Denial Thesaurus,” Florida is headed toward “statewide jacuzzification,” and “It appears by 2020, Miami will be involved in a surprise pool party.”

But the joke is on all of us: Florida has led the way in all but ignoring the growing twin threats created by human-caused climate change — sea level rise and superstorm surge — thereby creating a trillion-dollar real-estate bubble in coastal property. When the next superstorm like Katrina or Sandy makes its target Florida and bursts that bubble, the state can declare bankruptcy. So too could some insurance companies. But taxpayers — you and I — will get the several hundred billion dollar bailout bill.

And a bailout will be the best-case scenario for all of us. When the coastal property real estate bubble bursts, what measures do we have in place to stop another catastrophic recession like the most recent one, which was also driven by a real estate bubble bursting?

Let’s do the math. There is now at least $1.4 trillion in property within 660 feet of the U.S. coast, a detailed analysis of the data by Reuters found. Worse, “incomplete data for some areas means the actual total is probably much higher.”

While Florida is denying the very existence of climate change, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is here to remind us that, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” And what science told us in the last 12 months about likely sea level rise has been shocking. It’s the kind of news that should have stopped coastal development cold.

Last May, we learned that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) appears close to, if not past, the point of irreversible collapse. Relatedly, “Greenland’s icy reaches are far more vulnerable to warm ocean waters from climate change than had been thought.”

We also learned in August that Greenland and the WAIS more than doubled their rate of ice loss in the last five years.

Already this year, we learned two more stunners. First, a large glacier in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet turns out to be as unstable and as vulnerable to melting from underneath as WAIS is. This alone could “could lead to an extreme thaw increases sea levels by about 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) worldwide if the glacier vanishes.”

Second, two new studies find that global warming is weakening a crucial ocean circulation pathway in the North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream system, to a level “apparently unique in the last thousand years.” And if that circulation continues to weaken, it would also add another few feet of sea level rise to the East Coast. Indeed, this weakening is maybe one reason why large parts of the East Coast are already experiencing much faster sea level rise than the rest of the world.

A January study found that global sea level rise since 1990 has been speeding up even faster than we knew. “The sea-level acceleration over the past century has been greater than had been estimated by others,” explained lead writer Eric Morrow. “It’s a larger problem than we initially thought.”

The recent findings have led top climatologists to conclude we are headed toward what used to be the high end of projected global sea level rise this century: four to six feet or more. A 2013 NOAA study found that, under such sea level rise, the areas that received the very worst storm surges from Superstorm Sandy — such as devastated places like Sandy Hook and The Battery — will be inundated by such storm surges every year or two. In fact, in that scenario, the New Jersey shore from Atlantic City south would see Sandy level storm surges almost every year by mid-century

Worse, as discussed above, the East Coast of the United States is very likely headed toward considerably higher sea level rise over the next century than the planet as a whole. If we don’t take very aggressive action to slash carbon pollution, we could be facing a rise upwards of 10 feet. And considerably more than that after 2100 — sea level rise exceeding a foot per decade.

And so we are in a major coastal real estate bubble.

How big is the bubble, and who will pay when it bursts? The excellent Reuters series, “The crisis of rising sea levels: Water’s Edge,” has a sobering chart:

It’s a trillion-dollar bubble. And it looks like American taxpayers are on the hook for much of it.

Florida is ground-zero for this bubble for several reasons. First, as the chart shows, Florida’s $484 billion leads the country in “the value of property covered by the National Flood Insurance Program, often at below market rates.” Indeed, its covered property is three times as much as the next state, Texas.

Second, Florida’s topology makes some of its urban coastal areas especially vulnerable to warming-driven sea level rise and storm surge. Tampa Bay has unique geography that puts it atop Climate Central’s list of U.S. cities most vulnerable to a direct hit from a major hurricane. And Miami is second on the list!

The Miami area is so flat that even with a mere three feet of sea-level rise, “more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone.”

Third, Miami-Dade County by itself has some $94 billion worth of property along coastal waters — and the city can’t protect itself the way many coastal cities can. “Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,” explained Robert Daoust, who works at a Dutch firm specializing in designing responses to rising sea levels. Why? As Jeff Goodell noted in Rolling Stone:

South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. “Imagine Swiss cheese, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like,” says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily – it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below.

For all these reasons, Harold Wanless, chair of University of Miami’s Geological Sciences Department, told National Geographic in 2013, “I cannot envision southeastern Florida having many people at the end of this century.” In 2014, he said, “Miami, as we know it today, is doomed. It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.”

Under these dire circumstances, a rational statewide response might be to stop all new coastal development, have insurance priced according to risk, and start doing some intense planning. Instead we have Rick Scott’s complete denial, and sharp cuts in the budget for the South Florida Water Management District. Chuck Watson, a disaster ­impact analyst with a great deal of Florida experience, has warned, “There is no serious thinking, no serious planning, about any of this going on at the state level.

“The view is, ‘Well, if it gets real bad, the federal government will bail us out,’ ” he said. “It is beyond denial; it is flat-out delusional.”

The state level denial, while easy to milk for laughs, is thus epicly tragic — and not just for Floridians, but for all of us.

Significantly, the planning going on at the local level, while better informed, is still relatively blind to what’s coming and what the response needs to be. That is clear from a very recent article by WLRN, South Florida Public Radio, “An Idea To Mitigate Rising Seas In Miami Beach: Lift The Entire City.”

KLRN interviewed public works director for the City of Miami Beach, Eric Carpenter, who asserted “The only tried and true solution to combating rising sea levels is to raise with it.” Seriously.

KLRN asked Carpenter about the sea-level rise projections Miami uses:

“All we can really count on are the projections that are made by the people that do this for a living. The Army Corps of Engineers are a great source of information. They’re projecting anywhere between seven and 24 inches of sea-level rise over the next 50 to 75 years. … We’re kind of picking numbers that are in the mid to upper portion of that range to be on the conservative side.”

Two feet by 2090 is not conservative. As KLRN points out, South Florida task forces “projected seas to rise anywhere from two to six feet by the end of the century” — last decade. The new findings discussed above make clear that the worst-case scenarios for sea level rise from the last decade have now become simply the “business-as-usual” scenario. Generally people prepare for the plausible worst-case — buying catastrophic health insurance, for instance — since the consequences of underestimating what’s to come can be so ruinous.

Miami should be planning for sea level rise of 6 to 10 feet by century’s end and a foot per decade rise after that. And it’s hard to see how “raising the city” is the optimal response. Is the plan to turn Miami into Venice? Will the valuable parts of Miami simply keep elevating themselves until the place becomes an island disconnected from the rest of South Florida, which will be underwater?

And what about storm surge? What happens when the new island fortress of “Miami Beachless” gets devastated by a major hurricane post-2050, with a storm surge of 10 to 20 feet?

There is a trillion-dollar bill on its way, with no one stepping up to pay it.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/30/3600645/rick-scott-climate-denial/

Climate worries insurers and military

by Alex Kirby, Climate News Network, May 15, 2014

The US Navy helps with the clean-up in New York state after Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Image: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons

Powerful voices in finance and the armed forces raise concerns about the risks of increasingly extreme weather events causing billions of dollars of damage and potentially igniting humanitarian disasters and regional conflicts

LONDON, 15 May − The risks associated with climate change have got some very important people worried − the people who pick up the bills, and those who clear up the mess or try to prevent it happening.

The world’s biggest and oldest insurance market, Lloyd’s of London, has published a report that urges insurers to include climate risks in their models. It says: “Scientific research points conclusively to the existence of climate change driven by human activity.

“Nevertheless, significant uncertainty remains on the nature and extent of the changes to our climate and the specific impacts this will generate. Many of the effects will become apparent over the coming decades and anticipating them will require forward projections, not solely historical data.”

Quoting the Munich Re insurance group , the World Bank says damage and weather-related losses around the world have increased from an annual average of $50bn in the 1980s to nearly $200bn over the last decade.

Causing havoc

The Lloyd’s report was published the day after the US National Climate Assessment (NCA) warned Americans that climate change is already causing havoc across the country. John Holdren, the White House science adviser, said the NCA was the “loudest and clearest alarm bell to date signalling the need to take urgent action to combat the threats to Americans from climate change.”

The most expensive year on record for natural disasters was 2011, when insured losses cost the industry more than $126bn. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused $35bn of insured losses, making it the most expensive hurricane in US history after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The Lloyd’s report says a 20 cm rise in sea level at the southern tip of Manhattan Island increased Sandy’s surge losses by 30% (up to $8bn) in New York alone.

John Nelson, chairman of Lloyd’s, told The Guardian newspaper in London: “The destruction Sandy brought to the eastern US seaboard was responsible for claims of up to $300m in lost fine art, a consequence of the many expensive US beachfront homes damaged.”

Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated much of the Philippines and other parts of south-east Asia in November 2013, was one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record.

Trevor Maynard, head of exposure management and reinsurance at Lloyd’s, said: “Climate change is very much here to stay. Hurricanes are getting stronger worldwide, and especially over the north Atlantic. . .  At the moment we are heading for a rise of four degrees by the end of the century.”

Mission reality

IT’S NOT ONLY the insurers who believe that climate change is a real and growing risk. Increasingly, the prospect is preoccupying military planners.

Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “This is a mission reality, not a political debate. The scientific forecast is for more Arctic ice melt, more sea-level rise, more intense storms, more flooding from storm surge, and more drought.”

A former US Navy officer, retired Vice-Admiral Lee Gunn, is reported by NBC News as saying that the 2011 Arab Spring uprising could in part be traced to a winter drought in China, plus record heat waves and flooding in several other countries, including Russia.

Gunn concluded: “There was a drought and a wheat shortage that resulted in an increase in wheat prices and, therefore, an increase in bread prices − a staple in North Africa.”

NBC says US security experts are also concerned by possible threats to the rice harvest in south-east Asia, and specifically in Vietnam. They say the melting of the Himalayan glaciers would add to sea-level rise, ruining rice production and ravaging Bangladesh. If it did, they believe, that could create a flow of refugees into India, and also threaten fresh water resources in India and Pakistan.

Dennis McGinn, the US Navy Assistant Secretary for Energy, Installations and Environment, told NBC that there were also worries in military circles about unstable governments and fragile societies.

“The last thing in the world these nations need are the severe and more frequent effects of bad weather, including crop failures,” McGinn said. “Therein is a recipe for the kind of instability that will inevitably involve the United States in humanitarian assistance, disaster relief or, indeed, in a regional conflict.”

A further report, by 16 retired generals and admirals, says climate change is a direct threat to national security and the US economy. The authors, members of the Military Advisory Board of the not-for-profit CNA Corporation, blame rising temperatures for, in part, worsening international tension. 

Their study says that the impacts of climate change are already intensifying instability in vulnerable regions, especially the resource-rich and rapidly changing Arctic. It says the projected impacts within the US will threaten its homeland security and major sectors of its economy. 

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/05/climate-worries-insurers-and-military/