Climate Change

One of the principle drivers (but not the only one) of the need for adaptation measures in coastal communities is climate change. Therefore, a solid grasp of the scientific understanding and explanation of climate change is necessary for making educated judgments about coastal adaptation.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the information most readily available to the public on this subject is of a quality that ranges from unusably oversimplified to outright bogus, although the communication skill of the media outlets or political pundits reporting the information may give it the illusion of reliability. Much of this media reporting also couches the reporting of climate change science within a political "pro versus con" narrative which is absent in the science itself, but presumably makes the story more entertaining for its readers. (Incidentally, media reports of both the "pro" and "con" variety are equally subject to the lack of reliability cited above.) The Coastal Advisory Committee hopes to be able to sort through and present some of the available content on climate change and adaptation measures which is reliable, accessible, and relevant for residents of coastal communities like Marshfield.

At present, this content is just the loosely organized set of references below, but should be refined and expanded with explanatory language as time goes on.

Web Sites

• American Geophysical Union Position Statement on "Human Impacts on Climate"
• "The Discovery of Global Warming", a history by the American Physical Society. See also the AIP positon statement on climate change.
• University of Maine Climate Change Institute
  • Adaptation to Abrupt Climate Change IGERT Program, also http://a2c2igert.umaine.edu/
  • A2C2 people
  • Mo Correll's work on abrupt climate change in Atlantic tidal marshes.
• The Climate Reanalyzer Run your own maps and visualizations!
• The Clilmate Change National Forum, a "new journalistic endeavor" which "will be to provide a public forum wherein scientists can discuss the latest research on climate change and share and debate ideas on aspects of climate change especially relevant to policymaking."
• Global Warming and Climate Change Myths
• Younger Dryas (Wikipedia), a commonly cited example of "abrupt climate change", in contrast to "gradual climate change", such as the long slow warming trend since the end of the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago. The Younger Dryas event lasted about 1300 years (12.8--11.5 thousand years ago) and mostly affected high northern latitudes. It was a temporary return to glacial conditions. It is remarkable in that the transition from interglacial to glacial conditions appears to have occurred over less than 10 years.
• www.coastalengineering.org Coastal Engineering Resources link page
• WHOI Changing Shorelines & Erosion

Research Articles

• Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms, Nature Climate Change Letters 14 July 2013 (paid access), 7 pages. Plus supplementary information, 45 pages. Also, media coverage.
• Protection of Coastal Infrastructure under Rising Flood Risk, Joint Program Report Series, 2013, 23 pages.

Books

• High Tide on Main Street, by John Englander, 2nd Ed, 2013,

News and other Press

• White House 2013 clean energy bill promotional materials and extended climate/energy infographic. It speaks more about the prevention side of climate change than the adaptation side, but there are some interesting notes on adaptation, too. It's not a lot of detail in terms of being useful for policy advising, but it could be useful in public education efforts. Note the state-specific links at the end. The Massachusetts report is only 2 pages.
• Maine Lobsters Threatened By Climate Change, Says New Campaign Huffington Post (AP) 2 July 2013.