State Climatologist David Zierden presented Climate Change Basics: Issues and Impacts for Boating to the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators on September 9, 2008

1. Climate Change Basics: Issues and Impacts for Boating National Association of State Boating Law Administrators September 10, 2008 David F. Zierden Florida State Climatologist Center for Ocean Atmospheric Prediction Studies The Florida State University

3. Enjoying Boating

4. Introduction

8. Florida Climate Center on Climate Change O’Brien Zierden

10. Natural Causes of Climate Change

11. Milankovitch Cycles Changes in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, obliquity, and precession of the equinoxes are the main triggers to the 100,000 year ice age cycles.

12. Sunspot Cycles The number of sunspots varies on an 11-year cycle. High numbers of sunspots correspond to increased solar irradiance and solar winds.

14. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations

15. The “Greenhouse” Effect

16. Atmospheric Composition and radiative Absorption

17. Historical Greenhouse Gas Concentrations

18. Global and Regional Temperature

19. Reconstructed Temperature Records “ the Holocene, which has already lasted 11,000 years, is, by far, the longest stable warm period recorded in Antarctica during the past 420,000 years,” - Petit, et. al., 1999

20. Modern Day Temperatures

21. Southeast Temperature Trends

23. Rural Weather Station

25. Urbanization

26. Global and Regional Precipitation

27. Global Precipitation Trends

28. Southeast Precipitation Trends

30. Climate Change and Hurricanes

31. Hurricanes and Global Warming? Emanuel (Nature, 2005) – Hurricane power has increased in recent decades due warmer sea surface temperatures part to global warming Webster, et al. (Science, 2005) – The number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes have doubled in the last 30 years, due to global warming.

32. Atlantic Hurricanes

34. Sea Level Rise

35. What if sea level rose 6 meters? Image courtesy of Environmental Studies Laboratory, University of Arizona

38. Local sea level measurements Pensacola 2.14 mm/yr Key West 2.27 mm/yr

39. Tropical/Mid-latitude Glaciers

40. Arctic Sea Ice "The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century, ” - NASA Scientis

41. Figure 4.19

42. Climate Change and Ecosystems

45. Increased Temperature Causes Coral Bleaching Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

46. Sea Level Rise Alters Wetlands NDVI = normalized difference vegetation index Raabe & Stumpf. 1996. USGS Open-file Report 96-35

47. An Uncertain Future