Climate Change: Localizing a Complex Global Issue

Abstract

Climate ChangeLocalizing a Complex Global Issue Martha E. Durr (bio) Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/. If only science were enough, the climate crisis would be solved by now. This is a statement I remind myself of and think about daily. Serving as a State Climatologist in the Great Plains, I have the privilege of providing a science-based voice on local-to-global changing climate. Global climate change is inherently complex, and often a translator is needed to understand and navigate resources to extract relevant information. Reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provide timely and valuable information. Implications and solutions to climate change have been requested by hundreds of organizations with information broadcasted to thousands of individuals. In doing so, insights into concerns for what climate change means and how action can and should be realized provide a wealth of knowledge for informing solutions. These solutions lie within us—how we perceive our risk, our will to implement lasting behavior change, and the ability and capacity to do so. This essay begins with an introduction of frequently asked questions. Then it summarizes our climate past in order to place future change into historical context; synthesizes local implications of global climate change; offers considerations; and provides suggestions for an equitable path forward. Background A statement I have heard on numerous occasions is "Our climate is always changing; why is this so different?" Our climate has and will continue to change due to natural causes. Shifts in our complex climate system (which is composed of the landscape, the dynamic atmosphere, the vast heat-storing and heat-redistributing world ocean, the frozen world, energy from the sun, and us humans) are common. Significant volcanic eruptions, cycles of solar energy output, and changes in Earth's orbit about the sun all influence our regional and global climate. Internal variability in the ocean and atmosphere also plays a role in our climate. Sometimes the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America cool, influencing the jet stream and weather patterns globally, even here in the Great Plains. When [End Page 97] these surface waters warm, the predominant weather patterns change, bringing us a different set of conditions. Since the global ocean and atmosphere are interactively connected, a change or shift in one part of the globe can and often does produce a snowball effect of sorts and influences weather conditions far away. What happens in the Pacific doesn't stay in the Pacific, one might say. We will come back to this later in the essay when it deals with the rapid rate of Arctic climate change and what it means for the Great Plains. While it is true that our climate does change naturally, it also changes because of what humans have been doing and continue to do, most notably changing the composition of our atmosphere. The primary way in which humans alter our climate is through an enhancement of the naturally occurring greenhouse effect. That's right, I said "naturally occurring." The greenhouse effect is often not well understood by the public. Ask anyone on the street what it means and you will get just as many answers as the people you asked. The science of the greenhouse effect has been known and documented for more than a century. Gasses in our atmosphere such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and even water vapor have properties making them essentially invisible to incoming sunlight. However, these same gasses absorb Earth's outgoing longwave radiation (thermal energy) and reemit that energy back to earth. We require the greenhouse effect for a comfortable life on Earth. Without it, our average temperature would be 60°F colder. What we do not need, however, is its enhancement. The higher the concentration...