Our waterways are experiencing the effects of climate change. What does Chesapeake Bay restoration mean when sea levels rise, temperatures increase, and storms become stronger and more forceful? Find out at the Sierra Club Jamboree on October 18,19 and 20, 2013 how climate change will impact our waterways, and what we can do to advocate for more energetic policy responses.
To the familiar cast of bad actors spoiling the Chesapeake Bay—sediment and nutrient pollution from various sources—we can add another player, climate change, which will assume a growing role in determining the condition of our waterways. Water quality is of critical concern for the Maryland Sierra Club. Many of our members have been and continue to be actively engaged in various aspects of Chesapeake Bay restoration.
Since at least the 1980s, scientists have been warning us about the consequences of failing to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and predictions about climate disruption have become direr in the last one-and-a-half decades. According to scientists, warming of the atmosphere increases the probability of severe storms, and is associated with more intense precipitation along the East Coast. Winters and springs in the Mid-Atlantic are becoming wetter, while summer rainfall has decreased. These shifts in weather patterns are affecting the nation’s water bodies. In the Mid-Atlantic region, tropical storms of unprecedented force have led to flooding events that seem to be more the stuff of fiction than reality.
As in the rest of the country, scientists and citizens alike are witnessing the impact of climate change on the Chesapeake Bay. Since the 1960, water temperatures have increased by 2 degrees F. In the last century, Bay water levels have risen by more than a foot. About a dozen islands have vanished; others have been evacuated. Thousands of acres of shoreline marshes have eroded away.
Even if the pollution which causes climate change were to be drastically reduced now—which is unlikely—the warming effect of past emissions would continue for several decades, a result of the thermal inertia of the oceans, which stalls the manifestation of warming effects on land by several decades. Under current emission scenarios, we could expect a 2 to11.5 degree increase in average global temperatures by the end of the century. But even an increase in temperatures as small as two degrees would have devastating consequences for many eco-systems.
While we lack the ability to predict the exact nature and magnitude of climate effects on the Bay, we do know that the impacts will be severe. Already highly stressed from pollution, the Chesapeake Bay is particularly affected by rising temperatures and increasing or decreasing levels of precipitation. According to the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the Chesapeake Bay Program, “The great sensitivity of the Bay to climate change and variability leads to the unavoidable conclusion that restoration efforts must account for the effects of climate change in order to succeed.”
So it is essential that climate change be emphasized in the Chesapeake Bay agreement. Highlighting climate change in the agreement creates policy leadership on an issue that achieved scientific consensus 30 years ago. It sends a strong signal to the public that state leaders are taking action in confronting an environmental threat of possibly catastrophic proportions, and it begins to prepare the public for the fact that restoration needs to take climate impacts into consideration to succeed.
The Maryland Sierra Club is promoting the inclusion of climate-change related goals in the new Chesapeake Bay agreement. Come to Claudia Friedetzky’s workshop at the Jamboree, “Climate Change and the Chesapeake Bay: Rising to the Challenge,” and learn how climate change is affecting the Bay, and what our chapter—and you—can do to advocate for an effective policy response.