100-Year Forecast: New Climate Zones Humans Have Never Seen

[columbusdem]

Source: Scientific American

If global warming continues unabated, many of the world's climate zones may disappear by 2100, leaving new ones in their place unlike any that exist today, according to a new study. Researchers compared existing patterns of temperature and precipitation with those that may exist at the turn of the century, based on scenarios put forth in the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue rising at the same rate, up to 39 percent of Earth's continental surface may experience totally new climates, primarily in the tropics and adjacent latitudes as warmer temperatures spread toward the poles.

Researchers say the analysis was intended to more precisely gauge the ecological consequences of climate change. Studies have already estimated that species such as butterflies are creeping toward the poles at a rate of six kilometers per decade as temperatures rise. Some species, however, may not be able to keep pace with future changes potentially leading to new regional ecosystems as novel climate patterns emerge, possibly leading to extinctions if some climates disappear entirely.

Read more: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleid=90A5DC7C-E7F2-99DF-320EEF89EB22219C&chanId=sa022

[Old and In the Way]

1. Our children's children's children will be experiencing some severe

evolutionary stress. I imagine that they'll be a significant Darwinian influence on the human population as genes that are more accommodating of the elevated temperatures will become dominant.

[Skink]

7. May the force be with us.

[Glorfindel]

11. Perhaps the new climate zones will resemble Yoda's home planet

in the Dagobah System. A great, tropical swamp filled with interesting creatures. Could be worse, eh?

[THUNDER HANDS]

13. so does that mean we'll be thinner?

and shaped more like Manute Bol?

[Old and In the Way]

14. Who knows? Maybe we'll become more lizard-like or head back to the ocean....

Sure seems like an environmental temperature range outside of modern human existence is going to call for a reordering of adaptive, evolutionary traits. If too extreme, I guess we become dinosaur-like, extinction-wise.

[superconnected]

21. A child born today, is likey to live to see it.

Our grand children will be alive for it.

[Psephos]

2. The article actually says "outside the range of modern human experience"

They don't define "modern" either.

Good article, though.

Peace.

[baldguy]

5. You'll need a shotgun to deal with the potato bugs.

[nodehopper]

6. omg wtf is that thing???

[baldguy]

8. A giant isopod

http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02mexico/logs/oct13/media/isopod.html

[Odin2005]

9. Damn, that's one huge pill bug!

:wow:

[baldguy]

10. Hence the word "giant"

[NYC]

16. Sea louse?

I didn't know they came that big.

Never mind.

This is what I called a "sand crab" when I was a child:



I was later led to believe this was called a sea louse.

A sea louse from Google images:



Another sea louse (not what I expected):

?i=041005144718

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:9HpvI_wvnjT6QM:%3Fi%3D041005144718

[Spacemom]

24. I. May. Never. Sleep. Again. n/t

[Megahurtz]

28. The Metallic Eyes are what gets me.

:scared: War of the Worlds!

[soulcore]

3. We've shit our nest.

Time to reap the whirlwind.

[Harper_is_Bush]

4. No, time to fight for our planet.

Time to demand the best scenario laid out for us by the IPCC is attained.

Time to bring down Inhofe and Exxon and all the other true evil lined up against the truth.

Time to walk, not drive. Time to stop flying. Time to demand clean energy.

This is war.

[Lisa]

12. the prof I work for described this as a "non--analogue situation"

(no modern-day equivalents in existence).

Actually, I was doing some local projections and found that summer temperatures (for Vancouver Island) were hitting monthly average values which would be equivalent to conditions much farther south, in Oregon, for that time of year ... literally off the map.

Thanks for posting. The article does a good job of explaining how existing habitats could be pushed out of existence. (My prof calls this "squeeze-out" and "pop-off", describing the disappearance of cooler habitats at the bottoms of lakes and rivers, and the tops of mountains -- it would leave many species with nowhere to go but extinction.)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. Yes, I lived in Oregon for 18 years, and I saw things change

For 17 of these years, the normal summer pattern for the northern Willamette Valley and Portland was dry with temperatures in the 80s. Absolutely ideal summer weather. One week out of the year, the temps would climb past 90, and occasionally into the 100s. Most homes did not have air conditioning, and people just toughed out the annual week-long heat wave.

However, in 2003, the last summer I spent there, we had SIX different weeks of 90+ temperatures. I had a corner apartment facing southwest, and around 4PM every day, it became unbearable. I had to head for a coffee shop or hope that there was room on the shady side of the building's rooftop garden, and stay away until the cooling evening winds began to blow around 8PM.

That's the normal weather pattern for southern Oregon, places like Ashland and Klamath Falls, not Portland or Corvallis.

[Lisa]

29. and to think of all the old people moving to the Pacific Northwest for the mild temps!

Not too hot, not too cold ... and as you say, a lot of homes don't have air conditioning. A major heatwave in a retirement area like Nanaimo could cause emergency conditions (like they've had in Chicago and Toronto in recent summers) -- and the town probably isn't ready for that.

That's very interesting, about your observations in Oregon. I've been meaning to look at possible shifts in the onset of extreme conditions (e.g. when people are used to seeing hot spells ... I know that where I used to live in southern Ontario, a lot of people avoided scheduling events like weddings after mid-June because of the chance of sweltering heat, and apparently now that threshold is a week or two earlier).

[Erika]

15. We will have to change

That alone is scary.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. The fact that most people WON'T change is what's scary

They'll be insisting that it's their "right" to drive gas guzzlers and take short-hop plane flights and cool their offices to 65 degrees in the summer and heat them to 75 degrees in the winter. They'll fight public transit and intercity trains because they want to keep their taxes down. They'll resist eco-friendly housing and farmer's markets and local businesses as "tree hugger stuff." They'll insist on building big cities in deserts that can't really support large populations without imported water.

Then, when the heat becomes unbearable, they'll scream and moan and wonder how it all happened.

[Marie26]

17. Sounds like the end of the world. nt

[TrogL]

18. They missed some stuff

They appear to be concentrating on the tropics.

There's lots of new problems up North.

Coniferous forests depend upon at least one -40 cold snap in order to crack open their seed pods. If this doesn't happen, seeds don't get dispersed properly, no new trees, no new-growth forest.

There's also the matter of mountain vegetation. Some of it is very temperature dependent and is the sole food source for some types of animal life. It has already been progressing up various mountains in some case reaching the peak.

[ends_dont_justify]

19. That information is fake!

I'm a scientist. You're just spreading that propoganda to keep your job as a weather forecaster! :sarcasm:

It's a sad state of affairs when you need science to state the obvious and those without a brain attempt to disprove that which does not require much thought with convoluted theories. I only hope people realize the truth before the arctic animals die out...

Also...one thing people seem to keep forgetting. The ozone layer holds the oxygen in, too. We should be worried about that as well...

edit: grammar, additional point

[superconnected]

23. non o this aint gonna happin cause bush'll save us by bringun on the

rapptuer. Jest ask yer preecher.

This ere is prop-o-ganduh.

Them dem-o-craits wit thir collej dagrees maid up this repoart jest to scear ya inter votin for a womin or some blaack man.

Gearge Bush will save us all. So relacks.

[DrunkenMaster]

25. I'm Personally looking Forward To The

"Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here" zones...won't that be fun?

[AliceWonderland]

26. Here's what I fail to understand about climate change denial

Even if humans have not one iota to do with these developments... why wouldn't you still be, you know, concerned?

I see climate change stories posted on news sites or general boards, and nay-sayers make jokes about it. Do they think it won't affect their lives, just 'cause they "got one" on The Liberals? Do they not think their food comes out of the ground and their rainfall comes out of the sky?

This, I do not get.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. Lack of science education, intellectual laziness, and plain old selfishness

For example, we had a heavy snowfall in Minneapolis early in March--and people joked about "global warming."

Never mind that it was 50 degrees and raining the week before Christmas or that we had our latest first measurable snow EVER (January). That one snowstorm was enough to bring out the naysayers.

We had 81 degrees in Minneapolis yesterday. It's going to be in the upper 50s and 60s all week. When I was a kid here in the Midwest, that was April weather. I used to wonder why all the magazines had spring features in March, because in Minnesota and Wisconsin, there was still usually snow on the ground then.

[Jcrowley]

27. K&R n/t