Climate change predicted to transform Vancouver into San Diego, but at a heavy cost

[Sheba]

A major climate-change study predicts temperatures in Metro Vancouver will exceed those of present-day Southern California in the coming decades.

Frost and ice will become virtually a thing of the past, heating bills will drop, and farm crops will flourish virtually year-round in the Fraser Valley.

That’s the good news.

On the down side — and there is plenty of it — the region can expect: air-conditioning costs to soar; worsening smog and associated health problems; increased forest fires and water shortages; summer droughts followed by severe fall rain events; and an influx of invasive species threatening forests and agriculture.

A new 70-page study, Climate Projections for Metro Vancouver, predicts changes in temperature and precipitation that will affect everything from sewage pipes to ski hills in the 2050s — just 33 years distant — and 2080s. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, based at the University of Victoria, assisted in the report.

The report’s author, Jeff Carmichael, division manager of utilities research and innovation for Metro Vancouver, said the findings are meant to help the region and its member municipalities plan for the future while doing their own part to reduce greenhouse gases.

It is common for municipalities now to have staff specifically devoted to climate-change issues.

“Let’s make sure that all of Metro Vancouver — everything we do — is aware of the most up-to-date information,” he said. “We’d better prepare and adapt for the climate that’s coming.”

Metro Vancouver plans to launch a more detailed study later this year into planning for stormwater pipes to ensure they can handle the more intense rain events to come. Municipalities on the rainy North Shore will have to address similar issues, while low-lying areas such as Richmond and Delta must consider factors such as the impact of rising ocean levels, storm surges and altered river flows.

Parks staff are also considering how climate change will affect plant and animal species under a warming scenario.

The report assumes a “business as usual” approach to global greenhouse gas emissions, and would have to be updated if governments adopt serious and swift measures to address the problem.

...

Vancouver Sun

[s211]

Originally Posted by Sheba

Vancouver Sun

Climate change advocates don't do themselves a service by being so apocalyptic.

[jlousa]

Agree with the above poster, credibility is thrown out the window with these outrageous predictions.

[BobLoblawsLawBlog]

Then I love climate change now why are people protesting it wtf? Let's get this thing going.

[retro_orange]

Originally Posted by jlousa

Agree with the above poster, credibility is thrown out the window with these outrageous predictions.

Just because you two will be dead or continuing to be oblivious to the real world doesn't mean it won't affect you or your kids to this extent in the future.

You are too 'Business as usual' for your own good.

If this article was just facts or all soft and positive it would be forgotten about quickly.

[jlousa]

I can assure you my kids won't be living in a "San Diegoed" Vancouver, nor will even there grandkids. The report is littered by what ifs and assumptions. When a article like that is published it actually does more harm then good, as you see pushback which then leads to questioning of the well written reports. Heck just look of the comments on that article and see if you feel any good was done by publishing it. Its not bad to call out crap regardless of where your beliefs lie. Personally I think this is one of the most globally politicized topics of our time and when the dust settles in 10-15yrs and the data is presented unbiased we'll see just how overstated some predictions were.

[Pinion]

Originally Posted by BobLoblawsLawBlog

Then I love climate change now why are people protesting it wtf? Let's get this thing going.

Yeah seriously, I'm gonna go down to the parkade and let my car run. Bring on San Diego.

[towerseeker101]

Originally Posted by Sheba

Vancouver Sun

If Vancouver becomes San Diego, is San Diego going to become a new Sahara Desert? Americans will have to move up north to Canada and Vancouver will be renamed to New Los Angeles (or New San Diego).

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by jlousa

I can assure you my kids won't be living in a "San Diegoed" Vancouver, nor will even there grandkids. The report is littered by what ifs and assumptions. When a article like that is published it actually does more harm then good, as you see pushback which then leads to questioning of the well written reports. Heck just look of the comments on that article and see if you feel any good was done by publishing it. Its not bad to call out crap regardless of where your beliefs lie. Personally I think this is one of the most globally politicized topics of our time and when the dust settles in 10-15yrs and the data is presented unbiased we'll see just how overstated some predictions were.

I agree completely with his.

I remember reading a similar story when I was about 10 years old how in 30 years Vancouver's climate was going to become identical to San Francisco's.

Well, it has now been 22 of those 30 years, and it looks like we still have a looong way to go (especially given this winter!) and I doubt the next 8 years is going to pick up the slack for that to come true.

Is climate change real? Yes.

Is climate change largely man made? Yes.

Are far to many environmental events lazily being written off as "Global Warming did it" Yes.

Are many of our models and prediction wrong, and some of them sensationalizing this issue? Yes.

I started realizing the above during university, so long story short:

I studied GIS in university and focused on the interior forests and grasslands of BC. These are ecosystems that require regular forest fires to remain healthy. Before forest fire suppression these events were very regular. A single spot in the Okanagan for example would see at least a surface fire about once every 10 years. Today there are many spots that have not seen a fire for over 90 years! This is severely damaging the bunchgrass and Montane (Ponderosa Pine / Douglas Fir) forest ecosystems with overcrowding (saplings are not burnt back like they naturally were 100 years ago) and natural litter pilling up on the forest floor.

The 2003 fire season in BC was a big one, but even during that "horrid" year only HALF the land area in BC was burned compared to the natural pre-fire suppression annual cycle.

Now this is where I am going, it is obvious that the forrests and grasslands in BC need to burn, and over the last 90 / 100 years the largest forrest fire season we have had was still 50% below the natural level, despite this every time we have a forest fire in BC all i hear is "global warming" and "global warming is burning the fires in BC" and "global warming will cause more fires" etc...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The forests burning in BC are not due to global warming, in fact, they need to burn more, much much much more than we have been allowing them!

Yet every year news publications and environmental groups keep publishing this same falsehood about global warming and forest fires in BC. This was a big moment of maturing for me, it was when I realized that even the things that I believe in and support have a bias, and have misconceptions and flat out lies in them.

Do i believe that global warming / climate change is a lie? No, of course not. But there are many people out there who are printing bogus stories with half truths / misconceptions. I am sure many of these are not done with any malice or ill will, but they are still misinformation and weaken a very valid issue.

So again this summer I will half to explain to my friends and other websites how global warming is not to blame for forest fires in BC...

[Jebby]

All these absurd climate change predictions over the past 30 years have proven to be nothing but sensational bullshit.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Well, that's how you get the public to act - by scaring them shitless.

[Shift]

But in reality, seems like we are almost always below the 30-year historical average for temperatures

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Jebby

All these absurd climate change predictions over the past 30 years have proven to be nothing but sensational bullshit.

We are past the stage of predictions. Of course their are alternate facts that are pretty handy for some folks.

As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Fea...ming/page3.php

[whatnext]

San Diego doesn't have intense rain events, sounds like they're mixing up their predictions.

[WaxItYourself]

A greenhouse gas is a gas with a dipole moment, or uneven distribution of electric charges, and an absorption frequency that exists within the planets blackbody emission spectrum. The bending vibration of CO2 absorbs at a frequency of 15 microns, near the peak of the planets emissions curve. This band has been decreasing in outgoing radiation due to the increases in atmospheric CO2. A doubling of CO2 alone will cause an increase in downward radiation of 3.7W/m^2 which will cause an increase of about 1C. With feedbacks that doubling of CO2 is, on average, expected to be 3C. There are other variables affecting surface temperatures though.

I notice someone in this thread making the claim that over the past 30 years models have failed. This is absolutely true. At least for the models of before 2000 or so. This is because they did not incorporate one aspect of natural variability known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the associated Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. It deals with things like increased trade winds, greater ocean heat uptake, deep ocean currents transporting that heat through areas such as the Indo-Pacific throughflow. Satellites measuring the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere indicated that the heat was still being retained as per know atmospheric physics. It just wasn't showing itself in the surface measurements and was being transported elsewhere. If the PDO/AMO cycle is detrended we follow much the same trajectory that models that did not calculate the slowdown show. Meaning we are on track for the same amount of warming. And now that the PDO has change phase from negative to positive we are once again on track for a large warming event over the next decade or two (If solar activity doesn't fall to a Maunder-type minimum but that is another story). 2016 was the warmest year in all data sets.

Warming is expected to strengthen the ENSO cycle. It is possible that natural factors will be affected to the degree that El Nino will be more frequent. The area we live in is rather largely affected by the ENSO cycle. The long term trend shows yearly precipitation has increased outside of the ENSO cycle. It has decreased in summer and increased in all other seasons. I, too, find it doubtful that Vancouver will become similar to San Diego but that is not a reason to write off the science behind climate change as some in here seem to be wanting to do.

[Metro-One]

I feel some are missing the point of what is being said. it is not dismissing climate change outright. As I have said it is real, and people are causing it.

But, sensationalized stories such as this do more harm than good, and like any issue there is some misinformation being spread and some sensationalization being done.

My forrest fire example sums up my personal feeling on the issue. Yes its real, but far too many events are simply being written off as climate change.

Just watch, this year if we have a big forrest fire every news company will say climate change and how bad it is, when in reality it is the complete opposite. We have not seen an average forest fire season in 90 to 100 years, and even 2003 was below average. We need more forest fires, not fewer, to restore the health of our interior (and even south island / gulf island) ecosystems.

[retro_orange]

Originally Posted by WaxItYourself

A greenhouse gas is a gas with a dipole moment, or uneven distribution of electric charges, and an absorption frequency that exists within the planets blackbody emission spectrum. The bending vibration of CO2 absorbs at a frequency of 15 microns, near the peak of the planets emissions curve. This band has been decreasing in outgoing radiation due to the increases in atmospheric CO2. A doubling of CO2 alone will cause an increase in downward radiation of 3.7W/m^2 which will cause an increase of about 1C. With feedbacks that doubling of CO2 is, on average, expected to be 3C. There are other variables affecting surface temperatures though.

I notice someone in this thread making the claim that over the past 30 years models have failed. This is absolutely true. At least for the models of before 2000 or so. This is because they did not incorporate one aspect of natural variability known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the associated Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. It deals with things like increased trade winds, greater ocean heat uptake, deep ocean currents transporting that heat through areas such as the Indo-Pacific throughflow. Satellites measuring the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere indicated that the heat was still being retained as per know atmospheric physics. It just wasn't showing itself in the surface measurements and was being transported elsewhere. If the PDO/AMO cycle is detrended we follow much the same trajectory that models that did not calculate the slowdown show. Meaning we are on track for the same amount of warming. And now that the PDO has change phase from negative to positive we are once again on track for a large warming event over the next decade or two (If solar activity doesn't fall to a Maunder-type minimum but that is another story). 2016 was the warmest year in all data sets.

Warming is expected to strengthen the ENSO cycle. It is possible that natural factors will be affected to the degree that El Nino will be more frequent. The area we live in is rather largely affected by the ENSO cycle. The long term trend shows yearly precipitation has increased outside of the ENSO cycle. It has decreased in summer and increased in all other seasons. I, too, find it doubtful that Vancouver will become similar to San Diego but that is not a reason to write off the science behind climate change as some in here seem to be wanting to do.

Thank you! I want to keep you in my back pocket. I don't see becoming San Diego as a reality but too many people expect someone else to make the sacrifice and can't be bothered to even do simple things like recycle or drive less or consume less. Today if you aren't cool and ignorant you are written off as a hopeless hippy that hates the economy. I do my part at least.

Remember, we can now officially grow Bananas in Canada after the summer of 2015.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/ca...-summer-in-b-c

[Marshal]

Originally Posted by WaxItYourself

A greenhouse gas is a gas with a dipole moment, or uneven distribution of electric charges, and an absorption frequency that exists within the planets blackbody emission spectrum. The bending vibration of CO2 absorbs at a frequency of 15 microns, near the peak of the planets emissions curve. This band has been decreasing in outgoing radiation due to the increases in atmospheric CO2. A doubling of CO2 alone will cause an increase in downward radiation of 3.7W/m^2 which will cause an increase of about 1C. With feedbacks that doubling of CO2 is, on average, expected to be 3C. There are other variables affecting surface temperatures though.

I notice someone in this thread making the claim that over the past 30 years models have failed. This is absolutely true. At least for the models of before 2000 or so. This is because they did not incorporate one aspect of natural variability known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the associated Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. It deals with things like increased trade winds, greater ocean heat uptake, deep ocean currents transporting that heat through areas such as the Indo-Pacific throughflow. Satellites measuring the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere indicated that the heat was still being retained as per know atmospheric physics. It just wasn't showing itself in the surface measurements and was being transported elsewhere. If the PDO/AMO cycle is detrended we follow much the same trajectory that models that did not calculate the slowdown show. Meaning we are on track for the same amount of warming. And now that the PDO has change phase from negative to positive we are once again on track for a large warming event over the next decade or two (If solar activity doesn't fall to a Maunder-type minimum but that is another story). 2016 was the warmest year in all data sets.

Warming is expected to strengthen the ENSO cycle. It is possible that natural factors will be affected to the degree that El Nino will be more frequent. The area we live in is rather largely affected by the ENSO cycle. The long term trend shows yearly precipitation has increased outside of the ENSO cycle. It has decreased in summer and increased in all other seasons. I, too, find it doubtful that Vancouver will become similar to San Diego but that is not a reason to write off the science behind climate change as some in here seem to be wanting to do.

Not being expert in this, I have no idea if this is nonsense or solid science. I am going to assume the later and so expect that you know a lot more.

So, how about giving the background to what you have laid out, and then unpack what you said with some more explanation, detail, even references. This is something that requires us all to become better informed and educated. You would be doing a good service. I suggest taking it one step at a time, post by post, so we can discuss as well.

[WaxItYourself]

Originally Posted by Marshal

Not being expert in this, I have no idea if this is nonsense or solid science. I am going to assume the later and so expect that you know a lot more.

So, how about giving the background to what you have laid out, and then unpack what you said with some more explanation, detail, even references. This is something that requires us all to become better informed and educated. You would be doing a good service. I suggest taking it one step at a time, post by post, so we can discuss as well.

Part I:

A dipole moment is one where there is an uneven distribution of electric charges. A CO2 molecule looks like this more or less O=C=O. When the molecule is excited and it exhibits it's bending vibration the carbon atom travels up and down past the plane of the two oxygen atoms. This forms a dipole moment and it becomes infrared active. Here is a short chapter from a University textbook on it.

http://forecast.uchicago.edu/archer....ouse_gases.pdf

Note that there are two forms of bending vibrations. In the image at the bottom they show that the bending vibration absorbs at a wavenumber of 1595cm^-1. In the text and other images, though, they do indicate that the bending vibration associated with the greenhouse effect absorbs in a band centered at 667cm^-1.

There have been numerous studies on the subject related to CO2 ability to retain energy in the troposphere, or lower atmosphere, for longer than it would be without those gases present. Harries et al did so for the first time in 2001 using satellite data from 1970 to 1997.

Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997 (Harries et al, 2001) - https://www.researchgate.net/profile...7ed4000000.pdf

Other studies have taken the original study up to near present time. Griggs et al brought it up to 2008 with the addition of AIRS satellite info. Chapman et al brought it even further. Brindley published a review article on the findings in 2016.

The Spectral Signature of Recent Climate Change (Brindley et al, 2016) - https://link.springer.com/article/10...641-016-0039-5

The above is corroborated with ground based measurements.

Global atmospheric downward longwave radiation over land surface under all-sky conditions from 1973 to 2008 (Wang et al, 2009) - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...9JD011800/full

Regarding the no-feedback sensitivity of a doubling of CO2 on climate we can look at this page where it states the following "With no feedback effects at all, the change would be just 1 degree Celsius, climate scientists agree. Virtually all of the controversies over climate science hinge on just how strong the various feedbacks may be — and on whether scientists may have failed to account for some of them."

http://news.mit.edu/2010/explained-climate-sensitivity

You can also read that the best estimate, given by IPCC AR5, for a doubling of CO2 is 3C with a range of uncertainty between 2C and 4.5C. Currently, though, with an increase from the preindustrial 280 parts per million to currently over 400 parts per million, close to a 40% increase, there has been a rise of about 1C in surface temperatures. The Scripps CO2 program starts it's measurements from the post-industrial time of 1958 which began with a concentration of 310ppm.

Scripps CO2 program: http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/
HadCRUT4 Surface Temperature: https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/t...e/HadCRUT4.png (https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/t...adCRUT4-gl.dat)

[WaxItYourself]

Part II:

Many models coded before knowledge of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation become mainstream failed post-1998 because they did not account for the slowdown in warming. This has been discussed quite a bit in the scientific literature and the reasoning behind it has as well.

This is the first paper I have listed in my database on the subject. It states, basically, that there are perturbations in the long term trend but that doesn't necessarily mean that the long term trend has changed.

Is the climate warming or cooling? (Easterling et al, 2009) - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...9GL037810/full

And this paper which points to the ENSO and brings up the AMO, which they also states has not been a source of cooling over the past couple decades. (More on this later)

Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years (Fyfe et al, 2013) - http://www.stat.washington.edu/peter...m/fyfeetal.pdf

Here is a paper stating that the models failed to capture the slowdown in warming beginning in the early 2000's but those models that capture the IPO/PDO cooling were able to adequately model trends.

Climate model simulations of the observed early-2000s hiatus of global warming (Meehl et al, 2014) - http://fulltext.calis.edu.cn/nature/...limate2357.pdf

I'll list a few more papers on this subject before delving into the causes.

Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase (Risbey et al, 2014) - http://www.marine.csiro.au/~ris009/p..._well_2014.pdf
Robust warming projections despite the recent hiatus (England et al, 2015) - http://web.science.unsw.edu.au/~matt...cluding-SI.pdf
Quantifying the likelihood of a continued hiatus in global warming (Roberts et al, 2015) -https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher_Roberts5/publication/273093564_Quantifying_the_likelihood_of_a_continued_hiatus_in_global_warming/links/54f6e39e0cf27d8ed71fa2f6.pdf

The causes of this slowdown has been looked into quite a bit. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is the leading contender. The AMO runs counter to the PDO and the ENSO is a portion of the PDO. I will list all of their indexes here.

PDO Index: http://research.jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
ENSO Index: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
AMO Index: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/catalog/...AMO_fig123.gif

You can pretty much see that ENSO follows the phase of the PDO, of which ENSO is a part of, and the phase change of the PDO is approximately the same time as the phase change of the AMO only in opposite directions. This has lead to a whole lot of discussion and studies on the topic of how this relates to the 'hiatus' period and the constituents that make up the various oscillations and how they transport heat.

Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling (Kosaka et al, 2013) - http://climate.fas.harvard.edu/files...ature_2013.pdf
Strengthening of ocean heat uptake efficiency associated with the recent climate hiatus (Watanabe et al, 2013) - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...grl.50541/full
Surface warming hiatus caused by increased heat uptake across multiple ocean basins (Drijfhout et al, 2014) - http://www.ncaor.gov.in/files/Scienc...n-04-12-14.pdf

Now there have been studies in various aspects that make up the PDO. I'll list some here.

Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus (England et al, 2014) - http://www.geo.cornell.edu/ocean/eas...irculation.pdf
Recent Walker circulation strengthening and Pacific cooling amplified by Atlantic warming (McGregor et al, 2014) - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf

And the following papers indicate how that heat is being transported.

Pacific origin of the abrupt increase in Indian Ocean heat content during the warming hiatus (Lee et al, 2015) - http://sunburn.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/Lee_ngeo15.pdf
Role of Indian Ocean SST variability on the recent global warming hiatus (Arora et al, 2016) - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...21818115300412 (Abstract only)

I'll continue later tonight perhaps as life calls now.