Climate change is upon us, and businesses need to adjust
The record-breaking hurricanes, wildfires and blizzards of 2017 may surprise some, but they were all predicted 25 years ago.
The prophecies were neither secret nor the product of supernatural powers. They were forecast by scientists calculating what would happen if average global temperatures continued to rise. They did, and now here we are.
I remember the predictions well because I was wrapping up my senior thesis at the University of Texas at Austin, considering whether the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer could serve as model for a treaty limiting carbon dioxide emissions.
The short answer was no, and the Kyoto Protocol’s failure later proved me right. The scientists studying how warmer temperatures might change the climate were also proved accurate, particularly when it comes to hurricanes.
In 1992, after Hurricane Andrew struck south Florida as a Category 5 storm, Newsweek asked whether a warmer planet with warmer oceans might generate storms of greater severity.
“Extra heat turns up the intensity of a storm by strengthening all the forces that shape it. Water vapor, rising and cooling and releasing heat into the air, is the engine that drives a hurricane,” Jerry Mahlman, a climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Newsweek.
This year will be remembered for the first time two Atlantic hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, hit the mainland United States as Category 4 storms. When all the energy carried ashore by 2017’s tropical storms is tallied together, no other season has unleashed such fury, according to NOAA.
Not every year will produce the kind of storms 2017 witnessed. But with average ocean temperatures setting record highs in 2015, 2016 and 2017, according to NOAA, there is every reason to prepare for more storms like hurricanes
Harvey and Irma.
Temperature, relative humidity, precipitation and wind speed also determine the intensity of wildfires. In 1990, researchers Mike Flannigan and C.E. Van Wagner at Canada’s National Forestry Institute predicted climate change would create drier conditions, extend the fire season, increase the acreage burned and trigger more intense fires.
A record-setting drought followed by a wet winter and the hottest September ever recorded in Northern California set the conditions for the most-costly wildfires in the nation’s history, causing more than $10 billion in losses, NOAA estimates. The U.S. Forest Service spent more than $2 billion fighting fires that burned 3.4 million acres in 2017.
The most counterintuitive impact of a warmer climate is more severe cold weather. Higher average temperatures do not mean that extreme winter events will be less likely. In fact, scientists predicted warmer water temperatures in northern latitudes could shift weather patterns and intensify winter storms.
Authorities declared an emergency in Erie, Pa., on Christmas Day after receiving 34 inches of snow, the most ever in a single day. Another 24 inches fell on Tuesday, making the storm reminiscent of Harvey’s 51 inches of rain. The previous single-day snowfall record had been 20 inches.
The key factor in the huge snowfall? Warmerthan-average lake temperatures. When Arctic winds blow over Lake Erie’s open water, more water vapor enters the atmosphere and results in a much heavier lake effect snowfall. Lake effect snowstorms normally end when the lake begins freezing over, reducing the amount of open water. But with warmer water, the lake takes longer to freeze, if at all, leading to more severe and longer blizzards.
Some predictions about climate change made in the early 1990s have not come true, but the most important ones have. The very first temperature forecast made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990 has proved remarkably accurate.
The Earth today is warmer than it has been since at least the year 1000, according to NOAA scientists, who study glaciers and the fossil record. While some scientists may debate whether humans have the power to slow climate change, no serious academic doubts its reality.
The Department of Defense, Wall Street, credit rating agencies, energy producers, insurance companies and every national leader, except President Donald Trump, recognize climate change as the biggest threat to the world’s economy over the next century.
As we consider responses to Hurricane Harvey, all businesspeople need to evaluate how a warmer planet will affect them. What property is at risk? How will revenues shift? Where are the business opportunities? A lot of people are going to make a lot of money tackling climate change.
After all, 2017 is only a preview of things to come.