As I write this article, Hurricane Irma is illustrating to Americans in the most devastating way that we ultimately cannot control nature, even though we may often act as if we can. From the local to global scale, our policies and interactions with the environment often suggest our underlying assumption that we can alter our environment to our needs with no consequences. Since we often cannot visibly see the impacts our actions have on the environment, we continue with the status quo.
However, there are times our actions are halted and we are reminded that we are humans dependent on the environment in which we live. In less than three weeks, there have been four major hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and I would argue that Mother Nature is begging us to pause and pay attention.
Statistically speaking, North Carolina is overdue for a big hurricane hit and last week Irma’s projected path instilled fear in many North Carolinians from the mountains to the coast. Now, more than ever, we need universities like NC State to expand its efforts to engage our academic communities in research, teaching and outreach activities to improve our capacity for dealing with our rapidly changing coastline. Coastal development, rising sea levels and intense storms impact not only the intertidal zone but also the coastal plain and North Carolina is not prepared.
NC State’s CMAST program is an effort to engage students in coastal research and increase knowledge as to how to sustain and manage our coastal environment. They offer the undergraduate program Semester at CMAST. This program is the first of its kind at NC State, tailored to allow undergraduates to integrate coastal issues into their existing academic programs.
While these programs at CMAST are attempting to improve our collective stewardship of our coast and its valuable resources, they must be prioritized and adequately funded to fit the increasing vulnerability of our state to hurricanes and inland flooding.
When Americans think of climate change, they think of it to a large degree in abstract terms, impacting people they do not know in places they have never been. However, intense storms like Harvey and Irma may become the new norm as the earth continues to warm. Regardless of whether you accept that global warming has a role in intensifying these storms, Americans are being forced to see firsthand just how much damage these powerful storms leave in their wake.
Hurricane Harvey was later described as a “1,000-year flood event” according to an analysis from the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center. At the time Harvey was named a Category 4 storm, the section of the Gulf it was over was approximately 4 degrees above normal. While the exact contribution our warming climate had on Harvey is hard to estimate, scientists agree that the rising surface temperatures of the Gulf created the ideal conditions to intensify the tropical storm.
For Hurricane Harvey, the National Weather Service had to add more colors to its rainfall map in order to adequately represent the unbelievable 33 trillion gallons the storm dumped along the Gulf of Mexico. As rainfall events in the U.S. are becoming heavier and more frequent, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey are working to redraw flood maps to include regions in the U.S. that were once considered safe from flooding.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, if we do not curb emissions that cause global warming, scientists predict that by the end of the century the amount of rainfall during the heaviest precipitation events will increase by more than 40 percent across the country. If we were to rein in our emissions, downpours are still likely to increase but only by a little more than 20 percent. In other words, there are actions in which we could take to mitigate the intensity of future storm events.
I want to be clear that I am not arguing that climate change is causing these severe storms, and there is still uncertainty about just how much climate change affects hurricanes. However, scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agree that warmer sea surface temperatures and increased heat and water vapor in the atmosphere result in conditions that intensify the wind speeds of tropical storms and make hurricanes more intense.
Although Hurricane Irma skirted us completely and the wind and rain North Carolina is experiencing is nothing in comparison to what was projected, this does not mean we should not take this close call as a warning. In order to further prepare ourselves for the next major hurricane North Carolina must react proactively in response to our rapidly changing environment.
Since we began collecting records in 1851, this is the first time the U.S. has been hit by two Category 4 hurricanes in the same season. Yet following Hurricane Harvey, the landfall of Hurricane Irma led the director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, to argue that the conversation should be focused on the cleanup effort and less on this anomaly. He stated, “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.”
While of course I agree that the focus should be on helping those affected by these hurricanes, I do not agree that having these conversations about climate change would take away from that effort. In order to be better prepared and create policies that are not just treating the symptoms of a larger issue, policymakers and our government are in dire need of adopting a more forward-thinking approach.
One that does not politicize science, but rather welcomes it for what it is — unbiased information that should inform our government’s decisions to better protect its citizens.
