Urban floods. Extreme heat. Hurricane storm surges. Polar vortices. Droughts and wildfires. Many casual conversations these days seem to open with anecdotes about the weather and, unfortunately, the effects of a changing climate on the environment, energy infrastructure, economy, and people.
The consequences of changing Earth systems are global. And they are demonstrably growing. What will the future look like, and how can our society plan to adapt to that future?
There is an urgent need for credible U.S. projections that have finely detailed views across space and time, said Paul Ullrich, a professor of regional climate modeling at the University of California, Davis.
Such information, he added, would give the research community “targeted regional climate impact simulations” that clarify local effects on infrastructure and society.
TGW simulations: Modeling possible futures
To address these needs, a group of DOE-funded scientists recently released a set of high-resolution scenarios that span a range of plausible changes in U.S. climate over the 21stcentury. The approach is called thermodynamic global warming (TGW).
The scenarios span a wide range of future warming possibilities and are designed to show how the events of the previous 40 years (1980-2019) would “replay” under warmer conditions. Each historic event replays eight times in the simulations — once in each of the two 40-year future periods for each of the four scenarios.
These data sets provide eight future instances of those events that can be used to show how previous challenges to the electricity grid could worsen under more extreme conditions.
Jennie Rice, a senior research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and IM3’s Principal Investigator, explains that the TGW simulations indicate potential increases in extreme event intensity, geographic scope, and duration, including how previously non-extreme events could become extreme under a warmer future.
“For example,for each heat wave or cold snap that occurred between 1980-2019, these data sets provide eight future instances of those events that can be used to show how previous challenges to the electricity grid could worsen under more extreme conditions,” she said.
According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) scientist Andrew Jones, events captured in the simulations include every type of extreme experienced over the 40-year historic period — droughts, storms, dry wind events that increase the risk for wildfire, and events in which multiple extremes occur simultaneously.
“What is especially unique about this approach is that we reproduce known historic events that led to stress on our infrastructure and society,” Jones said. “For example, these include the deadly Chicago heatwave of 1995 and the back-to-back storms behind the 2017 Oroville dam disaster.”
Jones notes that reproducing known events is useful for validating modeled impacts of these events on society and our adaptive responses.
“This approach also provides a perspective on the future that is grounded in our experience of the past, enabling us to systematically examine how those memorable events might play out under various levels of future warming,” he said. “By applying this technique to such a large historic period and large geographic area, we can also examine how our findings translate to similar events in different contexts. Several past studies have only focused on one event or on a shorter time period.”
The research team cautions that the TGW approach is not intended to estimate future changes in the overall frequency of extreme events linked to changes in large-scale atmospheric dynamics.
A team effort
The simulations were led by LBNL scientists Jones (IM3 and HyperFACETS) and Pouya Vahmani (IM3), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist Deeksha Rastogi (IM3).
They used theWeather Research and Forecasting model to provide physical consistency across 25 hourly and more than 200 three-hourly climate variables with high spatiotemporal (space and time) resolution for the entire 80 years of each simulation. It took over a year to complete the simulations on one of the most powerful high-performance computing systems in the U.S.
The TGW Simulations team currently has a paper in preparation.
Freely available data sets
The TGW simulation data sets are publicly available and more fully described on thislanding pagethat includes instructions for downloading them viaGlobus, a file-transfer application and download manager. Many computing clusters provide mechanisms for transferring files from Globus endpoints.
Jones encourages the climate modeling community to download the data, apply it to their research, andcollaborate with the TGW simulations team. The IM3 and HyperFACETS teams are currently incorporating the simulation results into their research.
“There is so much rich information in this data set,” he said. “Our hope is that the data unlocks a series of extreme event-focused climate impacts and adaptation studies that were previously not possible.”
This data set has not been corrected for bias. A bias-corrected version is under development and will be released on theTGW Simulations websitewhen available.
Climate change could affect our society through impacts on a number of different social, cultural, and natural resources. For example, climate change could affect human health, infrastructure, and transportation systems, as well as energy, food, and water supplies.
Extreme heat can cause road buckling, freeze-thaw cycles cause pavement cracking and potholes. “Extreme weather increases the variability of weather, and roads designed for a particular climate range may fail more quickly.
How will climate change impact our society? Climate change impacts our society by disrupting the natural, economic and social systems we depend on. This disruption will affect food supplies, industry supply chains and financial markets, damage infrastructure and cities, and harm human health and global development.
The impacts of climate change include warming temperatures, changes in precipitation, increases in the frequency or intensity of some extreme weather events, and rising sea levels. These impacts threaten our health by affecting the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the weather we experience.
Climate change can also impact human health by worsening air and water quality, increasing the spread of certain diseases, and altering the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events. Rising sea level threatens coastal communities and ecosystems.
Any infrastructure that changes or diverts significant natural flows of water can have large-scale impacts, potentially destroying wetlands, drying river basins, and leaving communities vulnerable to flooding or drought.
From roads and transportation systems, to water and waste transport, to broadband, to the power grid, infrastructure enables the economy to function. Time and again, analyses quantifying the effects of this kind of public investment show that they support economic growth.
Climate change affects the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the places that provide us with shelter. Climate change can also impact people's health and well-being by altering the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events and spread of certain pests and diseases.
Recent research, focusing specifically on the effects of climate change on average temperatures, points in this direction. Temperature has been found to affect income via agricultural yields, the physical and cognitive performance of workers, demand for energy, as well as the incidence of crime, unrest, and conflict.
4. Climate change increases poverty and inequalities. Climate change disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable. In the poorest countries, a large part of the population depends directly on activities that are the most affected by climate change, notably, agriculture, forestry, and fishery.
Human-driven changes in land use and land cover such as deforestation, urbanization, and shifts in vegetation patterns also alter the climate, resulting in changes to the reflectivity of the Earth surface (albedo), emissions from burning forests, urban heat island effects and changes in the natural water cycle.
Climate change affects all regions around the world. Polar ice shields are melting and the sea is rising. In some regions, extreme weather events and rainfall are becoming more common while others are experiencing more extreme heat waves and droughts.
Individuals with outdoor occupations may be at greater risk of negative health consequences of extreme heat. Persons with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may be more sensitive to air pollution. Older adults with limited mobility are less likely to adapt or physically respond to an extreme weather event.
The five major impacts humans have on the environment include deforestation, global warming, overharvesting, pollution, and agriculture. These have contributed to vast species extinctions, incremental and continuous rises in the sea level, and record setting hot temperatures in the earth's greenhouse atmosphere.
By affecting the environment and natural resources of tribal communities, climate change also threatens the cultural identities of Indigenous people. As plants and animals used in traditional practices or sacred ceremonies become less available, tribal culture and ways of life can be greatly affected.
Global warming can result in many serious alterations to the environment, eventually impacting human health. It can also cause a rise in sea level, leading to the loss of coastal land, a change in precipitation patterns, increased risks of droughts and floods, and threats to biodiversity.
Buildings can be vulnerable to climate change. In the future there may be an increase in the risk of collapse, declining health and significant loss of value as a result of more storms, snow or subsidence damage, water encroachment, deteriorating indoor climate and reduced building lifetime.
Climate change introduces a spectrum of hazards that impact the built environment, ranging from acute events like hurricanes and floods to chronic shifts such as rising sea levels and prolonged heat waves. These necessitate a strategic engineering response to ensure structural integrity and functionality.
Climate change is expected to bring increased intensity rainfall events, a poleward movement of tropical storms, and more variation in extreme hot and extreme cold days. Increased winds affect lifting operations and work at height. Extreme heat and dry conditions impact the risks associated with hot works.
Climate change can disrupt access to health care services, threaten infrastructure, and pose physical and mental health risks. However, health care facilities also emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that contribute to climate change.
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