9 March 2005Keralanext.com
Groton - For many scientists, the question is no longer whether there is evidence of global warming, but how much the climate has changed, how the environment is being altered and how to persuade the public that dramatic changes are already happening in their own back yards and beaches.
A coalition of the state's science centers has taken on the responsibility of helping to get those messages out, beginning with a forum on Tuesday at the University of Connecticut's Avery Point campus. The Connecticut Science Center Collaborative is also planning a series of programs at member institutions to educate the public about how global warming is impacting the local environment.
This is not 50 or 100 years down the road, said Adam Markham, executive director of Clean Air Cool Planet, an environmental advocacy organization based in Portsmouth, N.H., that helped host the event. There have been changes already.
Tuesday's session began with a presentation by Cameron Wake, glacial scientist at the University of New Hampshire, of his work with Clean Air Cool Planet. Wake compiled data on average temperatures, rainfall, snowfall, length of the growing season and other indicators from a variety of sources to paint an overall picture of the many ways the Northeast climate has changed over the last 100 years. The most dramatic changes have occurred since 1970, he noted, when the average temperature for the entire Northeast rose by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, after rising by 1.8 degrees over the previous 70 years.
The warming over the last 30 years is probably the result of human activity, he said, referring to emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and other pollutants. The report, however, deliberately avoided analyzing precisely why the changes are occurring.
If you need to respond to the changes, it shouldn't matter why, he said. You have to adapt to it. Out of the last 1,000 years, the last 100 years and especially the last 30 represents the warmest period.
Coastal areas, including those in Connecticut and Rhode Island, are seeing some of the most pronounced effects, Wake said.
His data shows that over the last 100 years:
Average temperatures rise by about 4 to 5 degrees from coastal New Jersey to Cape Ann, Mass. In coastal Rhode Island, the average rise is 6 to 7 degrees.
Warming temperatures have caused average rainfall to increase by 3.3 inches throughout the Northeast, with disproportionately higher levels along the coast. Extreme storms in which more than two inches of rain fell in 48 hours or less have also doubled in frequency even tripling in some coastal areas.
Winters have become milder and snowfall has decreased by an average of 10 inches per winter.
The growing season from the last frost of the spring to the first frost of fall has lengthened by an average of 15 days, longer on the coast. Lilacs, apple trees and grape vines are blooming four to eight days earlier than 100 years ago.
Lakes frozen over in the winter are thawing 13 days earlier than they did 30 years ago. Overall fewer lakes are freezing over at all.
Average sea levels have risen by 14 to 15 inches.
In another presentation, Tundi Agardy, executive director of Sound Seas Washington, D.C.-based environmental consultants said the warming sea and air temperatures and increased rainfall will cause cold-tolerant species to decline and those that thrive in warmer temperatures to multiply. Coastal lands will shrink as sea levels rise, and pollution levels will increase as sewage treatment plants become inundated by storm surges more often and wetlands that filter out pollutants become flooded. New diseases affecting humans and wildlife are also expected to spread.
Loss of coastal wetlands will also reduce crucial nursery areas for fish, Agardy said, and some migrating birds may lose food sources as animals such as the horseshoe crab spawn earlier.
There may be an overall loss of biodiversity, she said. All of these may not be solely due to climate change, but they will be exacerbated by it.
For the marine environment specifically, warming temperatures are causing some profound biological upheavals, said Robert Whitlatch, marine science professor at Avery Point. Alien species such as zebra mussels and sea squirts have spread rapidly over the last 20 years, he said, as the changes of a degree or two in the average water temperature can make what was once an inhospitable environment for these creatures hospitable. Because they have no natural predators, they proliferate and crowd out native species that may already be declining.
Colder water species are moving north, Whitlatch said, adding that the ranges of species that thrive in warmer waters are expanding, while the opposite is true for cold-water creatures. Slight changes in temperature can change the community dramatically.
He noted that winter water temperatures have risen most. This allows alien species more time to establish themselves in an area.
Whoever gets there first has a competitive advantage, he said.
