Authors: Al Gore
The Future (92 page)
120
stronger cyclones (known as hurricanes in the U.S.) gain energy from warmer seas
Kerry Emanuel et al., “Hurricanes and Global Warming: Results from Down-scaling IPCC AR4 Simulations,”
American Meteorological Society
89 (March 2008): 347–67.
121
magnified by storm surges that carry the ocean inland
Claudia Tebaldi et al., “Modeling Sea Level Rise Impacts on Storms Surges Along US Coasts,”
Environmental Research Letters
7 (2012).
122
New York City was put on emergency alert
James Barron, “With Hurricane Irene Near, 370,000 in New York City Get Evacuation Order,”
New York Times
, August 26, 2011.
123
that can be closed to protect the city against such surges
Steve Connor, “Sea Levels Rising Too Fast for Thames Barrier,”
Independent
, March 22, 2008.
124
cities with the highest population at risk from rising seas
Susan Hanson et al., “A Global Ranking of Port Cities with High Exposure to Climate Extremes,”
Climatic Change
104 (December 2010).
125
cities with the most exposed assets vulnerable to sea level rise
Ibid.
126
into areas from which they may once again become climate refugees
Dizery Salim, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Climate Migrants Risk More Harm in New Surroundings,” 2012,
http://www.unisdr.org/archive/28113
.
127
are slowly sinking, in a kind of seesaw effect
Michael Lemonick, “The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region,” March 22, 2010,
Yale Environment 360
.
128
for a mixture of complicated reasons
OurAmazingPlanet Staff, “City of Venice Still Sinking, Study Says,” March 21, 2010,
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57401506/city-of-venice-still-sinking-study-says/
; Forrest Wilder, “That Sinking Feeling,”
Texas Observer
, November 1, 2007.
129
between South Carolina and Rhode Island, for example
Asbury Sallenger, “Hotspot of Accelerated Sea-Level Rise on the Atlantic Coast of North America,”
Nature Climate Change
2 (May 2012).
130
saltwater intrusion into drinking water wells and aquifers
Cameron McWhirter and Mike Esterl, “Saltwater in Mississippi Taints Drinking Supply,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 17, 2012.
131
Approximately 30 percent of human-caused CO
2
emissions
C. L. Sabine et al., “The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO
2
,”
Science
, July 16, 2004.
132
oceans more acidic than at any time in the last 55 million years
Andy Ridgwell and Daniela Schmidt, “Past Constraints on the Vulnerability of Marine Calcifiers to Massive Carbon Dioxide Release,”
Nature Geoscience
3 (February 2010).
133
faster than at any time in the last 300 million years
Bärbel Hönisch et al., “The Geologic Record of Ocean Acidification,”
Science
, March 2012.
134
ocean acidification global warming’s “evil twin”
“Ocean Acidification Is Climate Change’s ‘Equally Evil Twin,’ NOAA Chief Says,” Associated Press, July 12, 2012.
135
several events in the space of a few years can and do kill the reefs
K. Frieler et al., “Limiting Global Warming to 2°C Is Unlikely to Save Most Coral Reefs,”
Nature Climate Change
, September 2012.
136
one quarter of all ocean species spend
Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Acid Sea,”
National Geographic
, April 2011.
137
in danger of killing almost all of the coral reefs
David Jolly, “Oceans at Dire Risk, Team of Scientists Warns,”
New York Times
, Green blog, June 21, 2011,
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/oceans-are-at-dire-risk-team-of-scientists-warns/
.
138
80 percent of the coral reefs in the Caribbean were lost
T. Gardner et al., “Long-Term Region-Wide Declines in Caribbean Corals,”
Science
, July 2003.
139
same fate threatens reefs in every ocean
Frieler et al., “Limiting Global Warming to 2°C Is Unlikely to Save Most Coral Reefs.”
140
Great Barrier Reef corals had died
Glenn De’ath et al., “The 27-Year Decline of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef and Its Causes,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, October 1, 2012.
141
a cold container of soda stays more carbonated
Brian Palmer, “Does Soda Taste Different in a Bottle Than a Can?,”
Slate
, July 23, 2009,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/07/does_soda_taste_different_in_a_bottle_than_a_can.html
.
142
many of the cold-water reefs may be in even greater danger
“Oceans and Shallow Seas,”
IPCC 2007
,
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch4s4-4-9.html
.
143
very thin shells that play an important role
Anthony Richardson, “In Hot Water: Zooplankton and Climate Change,”
ICES Journal of Marine Science
65 (March 2008).
144
Southern California that have been sampled, are actually
corrosive
Richard Feely et al., “Evidence for Upwelling of Corrosive ‘Acidified’ Water onto the Continental Shelf,”
Science
, June 13, 2008.
145
killing commercially valuable shellfish
Alan Barton et al., “The Pacific Oyster, Crassostrea gigas, Shows Negative Correlation to Naturally Elevated Carbon Dioxide Levels: Implications for Near-Term Acidification Effects,”
Limnology and Oceanography
57, no. 3 (2012): 698–710.
146
oceans returned to a state comparable
Kolbert, “The Acid Sea.”
147
almost a third of all fish species are presently overexploited
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2010,” 2010,
http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1820e/i1820e.pdf
.
148
depletion of up to 90 percent of large fish like tuna, marlin, and cod
Ransom Myers and Boris Worm, “Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities,”
Nature
, May 2003.
149
critical ocean habitats like mangrove forests
Beth Polidoro et al., “The Loss of Species: Mangrove Extinction Risk and Geographic Areas of Global Concern,”
PLoS ONE
5 (2010).
150
sea grass meadows are also at risk
Frederick Short et al., “Extinction Risk Assessment of the World’s Seagrass Species,”
Biological Conservation
144 (July 2011).
151
near the mouths of major river systems is doubling every decade
National Science Foundation, “SOS: Is Climate Change Suffocating Our Seas?,” 2009,
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/deadzones/climatechange.jsp
.
152
large dead zone spreading from the mouth of the Mississippi
“Good News from the Bad Drought: Gulf ‘Dead Zone’ Smallest in Years,”
ScienceDaily
, August 23, 2012,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120824093519.htm
.
153
“when coupled with current rates of population increase”
A. Rogers et al., “International Earth System Expert Workshop on Ocean Stresses and Impacts. Summary Report,” IPSO Oxford, 2011,
http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/1906_IPSO-LONG.pdf
.
154
“We have spent our entire existence adapting”
Council on Foreign Relations, “The New North American Energy Paradigm: Reshaping the Future,” June 27, 2012.
155
damaged by extreme downpours and resulting floods and mud slides
Patrick Rucker and Mica Rosenberg, “Analysis: Storms Damage Budgets in Central America, Mexico,” Reuters, November 12, 2010.
156
skyrocketing expenditures for food imports
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “One Trillion Food Import Bill as Prices Rise,” November 17, 2010,
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/47733/icode/
; United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Agricultural Impacts Surge in Developing Countries,” 2011,
http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/i1952e/i1952e00.htm
.
157
nations are struggling to integrate arriving refugee groups
Joanna Kakissis, “Environmental Refugees Unable to Return Home,”
New York Times
, January 3, 2010.
158
another degree Fahrenheit of warming is already “in the pipeline”
James Hansen et al., “Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications,”
Science
, June 2005.
159
large-scale changes in atmospheric circulation patterns
Jian Lu et al., “Expansion of the Hadley Cell Under Global Warming,”
Geophysical Research Letters
34 (2007).
160
feeds the shallower Humboldt current
Erich Hoyt,
Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises: A World Handbook for Cetacean Habitat Conservation
(Oxford: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 2004), p. 397.
161
giant pipelines through which the trade winds
Henry Diaz and Raymond Bradley,
The Hadley Circulation: Present, Past and Future
(London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005), p. 9.
162
moisture they carried upward has fallen back
Ibid.
163
laden once more with heat and water vapor
Ibid.
164
are located under these dry downdrafts
Ibid.
165
the “rain shadows” of mountain ranges
Brian Brinch, “How Mountains Influence Rainfall Patterns,”
USA Today
, November 1, 2007.
166
what geographers call continentality
“Continental Climate and Continentality,”
Encyclopedia of World Climatology
, p. 303.
167
downdraft of the Hadley cell
Personal correspondence with Dargan Frierson, September 24, 2012.
168
south of the equator has also moved poleward
Celeste Johanson and Qiang Fu, “Hadley Cell Widening: Model Simulations Versus Observations,”
American Meteorological Society
22 (May 2009): 2713–25.
169
theories for why global warming is causing a shift in the Hadley cells
Lu et al., “Expansion of the Hadley Cell Under Global Warming.”
170
the difference in average temperatures
Jennifer Francis and Stephen Vavrus, “Evidence Linking Arctic Amplification to Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes,”
Geophysical Research Letters
39 (2012).
171
The widening of the Hadley cells
Lu et al., “Expansion of the Hadley Cell Under Global Warming.”
172
on the edge of persistent water shortages anyway
Personal communication with Dargan Frierson, May 25, 2012.
173
human alteration of the same natural climate feature
Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin, “Climate-Controlled Holocene Occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africa’s Evolution,”
Science
, August 11, 2006.
174
barrel loop atmospheric currents known as the Ferrel cells
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “JetStream-Online School for Weather,” October 2011,
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/global/circ.htm
.
175
pulling cold Arctic air southward in winter, and disrupting
Frances and Vavrus, “Evidence Linking Arctic Amplification to Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes.”
176
begun to produce a slight thinning of ozone
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Environmental Indicators: Ozone Depletion,” August 2010,
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/science/indicat/index.html
.
177
dangerous ozone hole above the Arctic might form on a more regular basis
Tim Flannery,
Here on Earth: A National History of the Planet
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010), ch. 14, “The Eleventh Hour?”
178
interacting with the unique atmospheric conditions
Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland, “Stratospheric Sink for Chlorofluoromethanes: Chlorine Atomic Catalyzed Destruction of Ozone,”
Nature
, June 28, 1974.
179
radiates the reflected sunlight back into space more powerfully
Australian Government, Antarctic Division, “Environment—Land, Sea and Air,”
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/fact-files
.
180
like Australia and Patagonia to high levels of ultraviolet radiation
J. Ajtić et al., “Dilution of the Antarctic Ozone Hole into Southern Midlatitudes, 1998–2000,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
109 (2004).
181
when air with low concentrations of ozone is no longer able
Ibid.
182
injecting water vapor in the stratosphere
James Anderson et al., “UV Dosage Levels in Summer: Increased Risk of Ozone Loss from Convectively Injected Water Vapor,”
Science
, August 2012.