Sea Level Rise is Scary, Sea Water Warming is Worse
It won’t be enough to move away from shorelines
In the early days of recognizing the climate change threat, the focus was on rising sea levels as polar ice and glacier melt accelerated. The common vision was of coastal areas being inundated and entire low level regions becoming uninhabitable.
The ‘no more Florida in thirty years’ theory. And yes, levels are rising, land is being lost and sea level islands are disappearing all over the world. But rising waters are gradual and offer a time to prepare or move. But a much bigger problem has emerged.
Ocean surface water temperatures are rising very quickly in many areas and warmer waters fuel more storms and bigger storms. And the impact of these killer storms is felt far beyond low level shoreline communities.
The atmospheric river of incoming heavily laden moisture, sucked up from warm oceans, and carried thousands of miles until reaching land, is a new thing. It is coming at a new scale, with multiple storms hitting entire regions day after day. Rain is measured in tens of inches and snow in feet, dozens of feet.
And in just days it has wreaked havoc across California, with mudslides and floods destroying critical roadways and isolating large areas of the state. Crops…
