A draft of the latest assessment on climate change finds that greenhouse-gas emissions are at least partly responsible for changes already underway in our ecosystems. Longer growing seasons, shrinking glaciers and the socio-economic effects of global warming will all be discussed in a new climate-change assessment report that will be released in Belgium tomorrow by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Today’s New York Times includes an article citing details from a draft summary of the report, and there is also a brief slideshow on the newspaper’s website showing how warming temperatures will have a disproportionately higher impact in countries with less resources.
Some of the data used in the IPCC report is provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, which located right here in Asheville.
Look for our interview with Dr. Thomas Karl, director of the NCDC, in next week’s issue of Xpress. Here’s an excerpt from that converstaion:
MX: What impacts can we expect in Western North Carolina?
TK: There’s a couple of issues that are particularly relevant for Western North Carolina. One of them has to do with … the devastation that water can do. One of the trends that we’ve observed in the data is an increase in extreme heavy precipitation, and that is expected to continue into the future, especially as the climate warms. That’s something that takes awhile to plan and adapt for, in terms of changes in infrastructure and routing water.
— Rebecca Bowe, editorial assistant
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