Climate Change - what to expect for cruising life

[picklesandjesse]

“For myself I can say that, having had every good thing that money can buy, an experience like another, I could part without a pang with every possession I have. We live in uncertain times and our all may yet be taken from us. With enough plain food to satisfy my small appetite, a room to myself, books from a public library, pens and paper, I should regret nothing.

W. Somerset Maugham...... many many years ago !!!!

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by GordMay

I'd deny it.
Recent research indicates that global mean sea level, or the average height of the world's oceans, has been increasing by 3 millimeters (.1 inches) per year on average since 1993, when satellites first started measuring it.

But along the U.S. East Coast north of Cape Hatteras, rates of sea level rise were found to be some three to four times higher than the global average over certain periods.

➥ https://phys.org/news/2017-05-differ...t-sea.html#jCp

You’re actually worried about 3mm per year? And please explain how the ocean can rise up faster on the US east coast than the rest of the world.

[boatman61]

Everythings bigger in America.. Houses, cars, motorbikes why not sea levels..

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Everythings bigger in America.. Houses, cars, motorbikes why not sea levels..

actually I downsized from a Spencer 42 to a columbia defender 29
Lots less work to sail .

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

You’re actually worried about 3mm per year?

Miami is.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Miami is.

90%+ of the issue in Florida is actually due to isotastic rebound from the last glaciation period of the ice age we are in

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by newhaul

90%+ of the issue in Florida is actually due to isotastic rebound from the last glaciation period of the ice age we are in

Uh, cite? Papers I found say that Florida has been stable or actually rising due to isotastic rebound.

I don't recall any recent glacier sightings south of Maine, either.

[Kenomac]

Answer to the original question: I will continue sailing to where the temperature is just right and comfortable. The Caribbean and the Med, and maybe the South Pacific in a few years.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

... And please explain how the ocean can rise up faster on the US east coast than the rest of the world.

From the limked article:


"... Davis and Vinogradova found that contributions to the ocean from melting of the Greenland ice sheet actually tend to accelerate sea level rise along the southern part of the U.S. East Coast, south of latitude 35◦, in part due to a force called gravitational self-attraction and elastic loading. Though the melted ice adds volume to the oceans, it also causes sea levels closest to a melted glacier to fall due to a decline in gravitational pull from mass loss, called gravitational self-attraction. The loss of ice mass also causes the land that was underneath that ice to rise, and depresses the floor of surrounding ocean basin, which is called elastic loading.

In contrast, changing ocean dynamics are responsible for accelerated sea level rise along the northern part of the coast, north of latitude 40◦. For instance, an influx of freshwater from Greenland glacial melt to the nearby northern Atlantic, as well as rising ocean temperatures in the northern Atlantic, are weakening an established current system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which drives the Gulf Stream. Typically the Gulf Stream depresses sea level right along the coast, so as this current weakens, sea levels bounce back. Meanwhile, higher ocean temperatures kick up sea level by expanding the water column.

Davis and Vinogradova chose to focus on the acceleration of sea level rise specifically to avoid the problem of accurately measuring what is known as post-glacial rebound. Post-glacial rebound is the ongoing shape-shifting of the earth's surface that occurs after it is released from the burden of mountains of glacial ice, a process that began in North America at the end of its last ice age 16,000 years ago. (These changes occur very slowly over long time periods, unlike elastic loading, which is near-instantaneous and "elastic.")

As with elastic loading, post-glacial rebound can causes the land or sea floor to bulge in some places and to sink in others, which can change the relationship between sea level and the land. Post-glacial rebound was the primary contributor to sea-level change over much of the 20th century along some parts of the East Coast—from Chesapeake Bay to New York as well as north of Maine. But short-term accelerations tend to be less sensitive to changes like post-glacial rebound that occur on time scales of thousands of years, said Davis ..."

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Answer to the original question: I will continue sailing to where the temperature is just right and comfortable. The Caribbean and the Med, and maybe the South Pacific in a few years.

aka head south til the butter melts. Me too. (...February. Yessss )

Doesn't mean we don't give a sh!t about anything, tho'.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Uh, cite? Papers I found say that Florida has been stable or actually rising due to isotastic rebound.

I don't recall any recent glacier sightings south of Maine, either.

I showed some where is yours

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Valmika

...Just because it is changing does it have to be bad?

Of course not. As I said in my initial post, I’m now looking at the Northwest Passage as a real possibility. This is a “good” thing for me personally.

Climate change is neither good nor bad in any absolute sense. The planet doesn’t care. The only ones who care are the species on the planet — like us.

Climate change is a main driver of evolution, and of species extinction. In mass extinction events, the fossil record indicates the top level species often don’t do so well in these shifts. This should give homo sapiens pause given our current position.

Climate change will be “good” for some areas, and “bad” for others. And by that I mean habitat and eco systems will be enhanced or degraded, depending on which species you’re looking at.

The real impacts for our immediate generations living in the rich developed parts of the world are mainly around added costs (insurance, building, mitigation, perhaps access to resources like food/water, etc.). But the bigger global impacts, and the one I think cruisers will feel strongly, are the social/societal changes as increasing areas of the world come under climate stress.

If we think mass migration is bad now, wait till drought and famine really start to take hold in some highly populated areas of the planet.

All the more reason to go sailing .

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Of course not. As I said in my initial post, I’m now looking at the Northwest Passage as a real possibility. This is a “good” thing for me personally.

Climate change is neither good nor bad in any absolute sense. The planet doesn’t care. The only ones who care are the species on the planet — like us.

Climate change is a main driver of evolution, and of species extinction. In mass extinction events, the fossil record indicates the top level species often don’t do so well in these shifts. This should give homo sapiens pause given our current position.

Climate change will be “good” for some areas, and “bad” for others. And by that I mean habitat and eco systems will be enhanced or degraded, depending on which species you’re looking at.

The real impacts for our immediate generations living in the rich developed parts of the world are mainly around added costs (insurance, building, mitigation, perhaps access to resources like food/water, etc.). But the bigger global impacts, and the one I think cruisers will feel strongly, are the social/societal changes as increasing areas of the world come under climate stress.

If we think mass migration is bad now, wait till drought and famine really start to take hold in some highly populated areas of the planet.

All the more reason to go sailing .

I wouldn't plan on the nwp don't expect non icebreaker escorted traffic for the next several years. Head south to the Caribbean.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by newhaul

I wouldn't plan on the nwp don't expect non icebreaker escorted traffic for the next several years. Head south to the Caribbean.

Oh don’t worry. I’m not seriously planning to do this — at least not yet. The point is that it has gone from a completely ludicrous, essentially impossible route for boats like mine, to today where some are now going through. You still have to be crazy, but less so than in the past. In another 10 years, who knows…

To my knowledge, icebreakers are not leading recreational traffic through. The do for commercial and naval traffic, but it’s not something done for recreational boaters.

[Orson]

Originally Posted by DeepFrz

myocean, thanks for posting this but as you have already seen you wont get much useful discussion about climate change here.

Contrary to what has already been posted cruisers worldwide are already being affected by the stronger and longer lasting storms caused by climate change. The weather is less predictable and patterns are changing.

Increased poverty and damage to popular cruising destinations are going to make these places less desirable and more dangerous to visit.

So it is said. (For instance SEE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jkHTNKozyo

) But if "Increased poverty and [environmental] damage" can be measured by our best understood - and most widely used - piece of data, GDP, then the answer is 'no.'

Instead of confident arm-waving assertions, what does the actual data compiled and published by scientists tell us?

For decades I've been an environmental scientist, with two-thirds of that time lived in Global Warming Central (ie, Boulder, CO), with numerous federal scientific labs devoted to the study of weather, climate, and ice, as well as two leading universities - Colorado of course, and just over an hour away, Colorado State University.

Personally, I prefer the science above future imponderables because it is a primary, not a subsidiary consideration - where valid answers are like "What will the market do? Vacillate." Which is true enough yet uninteresting.

One eminent scientist who's been studying climate change impacts for decades is Roger Pielke, Jr - professor of environmental science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. (That "Jr" part is important to remember because his semi-retired climatologist father "Sr" spent his career at CSU and put it on the international map as a leader, and among his 500 publications is a standard textbook on human impacts on climate, "Human Impacts on Weather and Climate" 2/e, 2007.)

Much of Pielke, Jr's undergrad and graduate years was spent crunching numbers for NCAR ("N-Car") in Boulder - The National Center for Atmospheric Research. Today, he is as well published on the topic of climate change impacts as any current scientist.

His latest assessment appeared last August ( "Tracking Progress on the Economic Costs of Disasters Under the Indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals, Environmental Hazards" https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...1.2018.1540343), but the substance was discussed on his blog (as well as at "Investors Business Daily") one year ago, (SEE article linked below at "more charts"): https://theclimatefix.wordpress.com/...gdp-1990-2017/

The key summary graph is "the annual costs of weather disasters (data from Munich Re) as a proportion of global GDP (data from the UN), from 1990 to 2017" - that's 27 years of data:



Contrary to poster DeepFrz, measured damage from extreme weather globally is in a declining trend. Is alarm over climate change supported by looking at "damage?" No. Pielke, Jr sensibly points out that "The most important caveat [is] don’t use disasters to argue about trends in climate. Use climate data. Duh."

Let's glance at another much-worried data point: rising oceans. Surely cruisers planning their RTW adventure to visit island nations ought to be concerned about the fate of low-lying paradises like the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, with a peak elevation of just 8 feet? In 1988, the government of France was alarmed that it would soon disappear!

Well, not only are oil-rich nations of the Persian Gulf funding large resort expansions in the Maldives, but scientists have even measured coral growth of these vulnerable islands ( https://climatechangedispatch.com/ma...ea-level-rise/ ).

So, if you're planning on seeing these special islands in years to come, you won't leave land disappointed!

Now, what about hurricanes? While US landfalling hurricanes have been in decline for almost a century, as Dr Roy Spencer notes (University of Alabama, Huntsville)...



...globally, the record compiled by Dr Ryan Maue shows a lot of year-to-year variability and evidence of regional cycling - although, no trends, overall.



Again, contrary to DeepFrz, we fail to see any meaningful trend linked to 'climate change,' man-made or not. However, since Caribbean sailors rightly worry about these massive storms, Dr Maue's in-depth discussion may be of interest; see HERE Global Tropical Cyclone Activity | Ryan Maue

And HERE are more charts on draught, wildfires, and snow cover for your inspection:
https://www.investors.com/politics/e...-more-extreme/

Roger Pielke, Jr., published a short, lucid, but authoritative book on weather and impacts. The Second revised edition appeared last August, entitled "The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change"
https://www.amazon.com/Rightful-Plac...dp/0999587749/