Stephen Young
Last July, I saw mushrooms sprouting everywhere, even in the sand dunes. This summer, I have hardly seen a mushroom and plenty of brown lawns and the smell of forest fires in Lynn Woods due to one of the driest summers on record.
This swing between extreme precipitation and drought is an aspect of our new climate — driven by a warming world.
In addition to the drought in New England, the world is witnessing some of the most severe droughts in history from the mega-drought in the Southwest causing Lake Mead and Lake Powell to shrink, to drought across Europe, spawning unprecedented fires.
Dry weather in southwestern China has crippled multiple hydroelectric plants, forcing cities to impose rolling blackouts, close industrial plants, and critical agricultural production is now threatened.
Along with droughts, our world is witnessing floods at an extraordinary scale. This summer, Death Valley received almost a year’s worth of rain in three hours. Eastern Kentucky was hit with a 1,000-year flood where 37 people died, and Pakistan’s severe floods have killed over 1,000 people.
These extreme floods and droughts may seem like a fluke, but they were predictable and can be explained by basic physics. As the atmosphereheats up, evaporation intensifies as moisture is drawn out of the soil and the warmer atmosphere has more room to store the evaporated water. This can lead to intensive, long-lasting droughts. Because warmer air can hold much more water, when storms do occur, they can produce greater rainfall, thus 1,000-year floods are becoming more frequent.
We have left a stable climate characterized by fluctuations returning to long-term temperature and precipitation averages.
Our new, transitional climate will not return to long-term averages and will continue to warm and as it heats up the atmosphere will be able to hold more moisture and droughts and floods will intensify.
We are just beginning to witness the punishing impacts of climate change-induced droughts and floods, which will intensify for decades. It probably won’t be long before we start to see 5,000-year floods.
To survive in the new climate there are two things that we need to take these steps: Prepare for and adapt to intensified floods and droughts in addition to other climate change-induced impacts such as sea-level rise, invasive pests, and extended heat waves.
We need to immediately incorporate resiliency into our policies and actions. Transform our economy and behaviors, which were successfulstrategies in a stable climate, but are now detrimental in the new changing climate. This means changing our energy systems,agriculture, transportation and more.
Basic atmospheric physics shows us that if we don’t transition as soon as possible, we will live in a world with horrific droughts and floods.
If you want to hear more from Dr. Young, the Conservancy in conjunction with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn, will be hosting a presentation by him on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 7 p.m., 100 Forest Ave., Swampscott, and also broadcast live on Facebook from the church page at https://www.facebook.com/UUCGL
You can also read his most recent publication in the journal Climate showing that New England is warming faster than the global average:https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/9/12/176.
Stephen Young is a professor in the Geography and Sustainability Department at Salem State University. Nature in theNeighborhood is a monthly publication provided by the Swampscott Conservancy courtesy of its president, Tonia Bandrowicz.