Why New England rarely sees hurricane threats like Henri
For the first time in 30 years, a hurricane is set to make landfall in coastal New England. Not since Hurricane Bob struck the region in 1991 have New Englanders been directly struck by a storm of this magnitude.
As of Friday afternoon, as Tropical Storm Henri crawled toward eastern New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, its wind speeds were just a few miles per hour shy of the 74 mph that would qualify it as a hurricane.
Read the full article in National Geographic.
How the climate crisis could further destabilize North Korea
Last week, the UN released its sixth assessment of the causes and consequences of climate change, stating unequivocally that human activities are driving an unprecedented rate of warming that is impacting life in every part of the globe. From wildfires to floods, the impact of such events can extend far beyond the areas that are directly affected, and policymakers should not ignore politically volatile, nuclear-armed states, where the cascading effects of climate change can have dramatic consequences. One key example is North Korea.
A recent study by the Woodwell Climate Research Center and the Council on Strategic Risks shows that climate extremes like heat, drought, and flooding will constrain the nation’s already precarious ability to provide public goods for its population, compounding persistent security concerns and threatening to ignite intersecting crises on the Korean peninsula.
One primary issue of concern will be the effect of climate change on food security, which has been an issue for the country for years because of long-standing poor policy choices. At present, North Korea is facing a food crisis so severe that the government has been forced to release army rations. A perfect storm of back-to-back typhoons last fall, persistent drought this spring, an ongoing summer heatwave, and recent heavy rains have led to the current state of severe food insecurity, even prompting the Kim regime to issue a rare famine warning this spring.
Climate projections on agricultural yields indicate that rice and maize crop failures will become more likely along the Western coast (where the majority of these crops are currently grown) over the next decade. The overall effect is added stress on the food system.
Read the full opinion piece co-authored by Dr. Alex Naegele on Newsweek.
How much worse will thawing Arctic permafrost make climate change?
Global warming is setting free carbon from life buried long ago in the Arctic’s frozen soils, but its impact on the climate crisis is unclear
The permanence of frozen ground in the Arctic is no longer guaranteed as Earth’s temperatures continue to climb. But how much the degradation of so-called permafrost will worsen climate change is still unclear, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Sixth Assessment Report, released this week. The uncertainty leaves researchers with a frustrating hole in their climate projections.
Permafrost covers a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere’s land and stores around 1.5 trillion metric tons of organic carbon, twice as much as Earth’s atmosphere currently holds. Most of this carbon is the remains of ancient life encased in the frozen soil for up to hundreds of thousands of years.
In recent decades, permafrost has thawed because of global warming from heat trapped primarily by carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. Arctic warming is rising at twice the global average rate since 2000, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As that increase accelerates the thaw of permafrost, the organic carbon contained within it breaks down and releases carbon dioxide, exacerbating climate change.
Read the full article on Scientific American.
Takeaways from the latest IPCC report
AR6 is a resounding affirmation of what has become increasingly clear not only with each new study but through everyday experience.
Today, the IPCC released the first volume of its latest climate science assessment report (AR6). It is a resounding affirmation of what has become increasingly clear not only with each new study but through everyday experience: our efforts to date have not been nearly enough to alter the disastrous trajectory that rising greenhouse gas emissions have put us on–one of rapid warming, worsening ecological disruption, and increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events that threaten the health, safety, and well-being of people around the globe.
These reports present no new research. Rather, they are massive syntheses of the ever-growing body of climate science. And, thus, their findings should come as no surprise. Even so, they are important indicators of where we are in understanding and addressing the climate crisis, and there are four aspects of this report that are particularly salient to our work at Woodwell Climate Research Center:
- In a departure from previous IPCC reports, this one notes the importance of considering the full range of climate risks, “including low-likelihood, high impact outcomes,” in decision-making. This, of course, is fully in line with the work of Woodwell’s Risk Program, whether assessing risks to the global economy or helping under-resourced communities plan for greater resiliency.
- Greenhouse gas emissions from permafrost thaw, are not fully taken into account in this report, but at least the issue is explicitly acknowledged. This also represents an improvement over previous IPCC reports, which were based upon models which omitted entirely this potentially important source of emissions. Understanding these emissions and including them in models, carbon budgets, and climate policy discussions generally is an important focus of Woodwell’s Arctic Program.
- All of the scenarios considered in this report show global warming exceeding 1.5ºC by roughly 2030 and highlight the importance of large-scale removal of CO2 from the atmosphere for keeping that exceedance minimal and temporary. Woodwell’s work on natural climate solutions focuses on the best means we have at present for achieving the needed level of CO2 removal.
- However, the report notes with high confidence that land and ocean ecosystems’ are expected to become less effective at absorbing emissions at higher levels of CO2. Our own work has pointed in this sobering direction, which makes it even more important to prioritize forest protection now over reforestation at some future date.
The good news is that as science illuminates the problem, it also points to solutions. And today, as we also observe the UN’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, it is appropriate that we recognize the important role that Indigenous communities around the globe play in protecting the forests that protect our climate. Two new analyses involving Woodwell Climate scientists show that Indigenous territories in Brazil experience far less carbon loss from deforestation and forest degradation than other lands, adding to the evidence that strengthening Indigenous land rights is both a just social policy and an effective climate policy.
Of course, this is just one piece of the puzzle. Decision-makers at all levels and across all sectors must take bold action to advance rapid decarbonization, preserve essential ecosystems, and foster resilience in the face of inevitable impacts. At Woodwell Climate Research Center, we’re working with Indigenous leaders and business leaders, local officials and national policymakers, to generate scientific insights that drive the changes our situation demands.
Thank you, as always, for your support and interest in this important work.