TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK PART FIVE

If it’s Sunday, it must be time for Tick Tock the Climate Clock.  Here are a few nuggets of recent climate news.

Time to Hang Up Your Skates.  The Elfstedentocht (11 cities race on ice skates) hasn’t been held since 1997 in Friesland, the most northern part of Holland, because the canals don’t freeze anymore.

Now You Don’t Have to Add Salt!  Fields in coastal North Carolina are becoming too salty for farming.  Scientists fear rising sea levels are shifting the underground gradient where fresh groundwater meets salty seawater.  Dikes and pumps can hold back ocean flooding, but they can’t prevent it from mixing with the fresh water aquifers.  

1993 Redux.  According to NOAA, nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 states have an elevated risk of flooding from now until May, and 25 states could experience serious flooding, worse than the historic floods of 1993.

They’re Having Twins!  Last week twin cyclones heading straight for Western Australia and its Northern Territories forced the largest evacuations since 1974.

Build the Wall!  Climate change is threatening national security at the U.S. Strategic Command just outside Omaha, Nebraska.   A retired Rear Admiral said that Defense Department officials “by and large know what they need to do, but …the White House does not want to hear about it.  We probably do need walls, but they’re probably levees.”  

It Wasn’t Us, Honest.   Global energy-related carbon emissions rose to a record high last year.  The United States’ CO2 emissions grew by 3.1% in 2018, reversing a decline in 2017, while China’s emissions rose by 2.5% and India’s by 4.5%.  Europe and Japan each get a gold star:  Europe’s emissions fell by 1.3% and Japan’s fell for the fifth year running.

Happy New Year!  Just days after its celebration of Nowruz last week (the Iranian new year), Shiraz, a city of 1.8 million, was hit by 2.33 inches of rain in 2 days—more than a month’s worth—killing at least 23 people.  

Baked Alaska.  Alaska is the fastest warming state in the U.S.  Since the beginning of March, it’s seen 55 tied or broken record daily highs through March 23, according to NOAA.  Anchorage has had no measurable snow in March for the second time on record, and on March 19, Klawock, a town in southeastern Alaska, reached 70 F.

Well, Isn’t that Just Peachy!  Milder winters are prompting the early flowering of fruit trees, exposing the blooms and fruit to increasingly unpredictable frosts and hail.  Unless breeders can develop more climate-resilient varieties, fruit-growing regions in the United States will be seriously disrupted, scientists say.

Don’t Peak.  About 300 people have died trying to climb Mt. Everest.  Some bodies were covered in ice and remained hidden for years, but now climate change is melting the ice around them, exposing limbs and bodies, as reported by the BBC. 

OMG!  Some Temporary Good News.   NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission indicates that the Jakobshavn Glacier, which has been the fastest-flowing and thinning glacier in Greenland for the past 20 years, has temporarily slowed its retreat and thickened.  But before you get out the party hats, the glacier is still adding to global sea level rise, and scientists don't expect the slowing trend to continue. 

Have a nice Sunday!

Keep it real!

Marilyn