A new report ("Climate Extremes: Recent Trends with Implications for National Security") out of Harvard University's Center for the Environment focuses on extreme weather -- severe storms, droughts, floods and waves -- and how climate change could be contributing to them. It says that we are already experiencing the preliminary effects of climate change, and that the trend will continue through the next decade -- posing a very real national security risk.
The prognosis is grim, says the press release: "Changes in extremes include more record high temperatures; fewer but stronger tropical cyclones; wider areas of drought and increases in precipitation; increased climate variability; Arctic warming and attendant impacts; and continued sea level rise as greenhouse warming continues and even accelerates."
The speed of the rising sea level has already caused several island states to begin crafting evacuation plans. The tiny island of Tuvalu, located halfway between Hawaii and Australia, has asked Australia and New Zeland to accept its 11,000 citizens, but neither country has agreed.
All these things will have an impact on global food and water availability, energy decisions, considerations in critical infrastructure and ecosystem resources. It will cost governments immense amounts of money in terms of human and economic security. The report describes the world as vulnerable, people reeling from weather events more severe than any we've seen before, unable to recover fully from one before being hit by the next (Sandy and Nemo occurring within months of each other, for instance).
“Lessons from the past are no longer of great value as a guide to the future,” said Michael McElroy, a professor of Environmental Studies at Harvard and co-author of the report. “Unexpected changes in regional weather are likely to define the new climate normal, and we are not prepared.”
The report is the result of a series of workshops held at the National Academy of Sciences, Columbia Univeristy, and the Harvard University Center for the Environment, with an international group of climate scientists. The study was funded by the CIA. It takes into account several areas of the world, including the effects of greenhouse gases on places such as China and Southwest Asia.
The report recommends that the government improve observation and monitoring of weather events, which is difficult because of its unpredictability. "Predictability requires both better models and better data," the report concluded, and would make early warning systems more efficient for people who are in the path of oncoming disasters.
