It was over 100 degrees in Atlanta today.  This was one of the hottest days in years.  Schools are in session across all districts in Georgia, some of which have air conditioning systems that are old, and are failing, or don’t have air conditioning at all. Across the country, temperatures have soured, and in some cases with little relief on the horizon.  This is the new normal.  We will continue to see hotter and hotter summer weather across the United States.  This is the result of global warming. 

My good friend, Don Peck, a former science supervisor, professor of science education, and geologist

In an article published in the Washington Post, the authors wrote that “Extreme climate change has arrived in America.”  Their article, 2°C: Beyond the limit, is good assessment of the current condition of the United States’ climate. 

As reported in the article, The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that an increase of global temperatures that exceed 2° destroy coral reefs, cause the melting of huge rafts of ice in Greenland and the Antarctic, resulting in sea level rise.  The rising sea level is already seeing effects including the repeated flooding of cities such as Savannah, GA, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine, FL as examples.  In the future, there is the possibility that all of Florida and many of the east coast cities will be flooded. 

In Beyond the limit, the authors point out that global warming has meant increasing winter temperatures.  They point out that the average temperatures for Dec-Feb in New Jersey now exceed 0° C, the freezing point of water. Lakes will freeze less, and snow will melt more rapidly.  They put it this way:

The average New Jersey temperature from December through February now exceeds 0 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which water freezes. That threshold, reached over the past three decades, has meant lakes don’t freeze as often, snow melts more quickly, and insects and pests don’t die as they once did in the harsher cold.   Source: “ 2°C: Beyond the Limit Extreme Climate Change Has Arrived in America.” 2°C: Beyond the Limit Extreme Climate Change Has Arrived in America, Washington Post, 12 Aug. 2019, 5:04 PM, www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1.

Many “hot spots” in the US have already exceeded the 2° average increase in temperature.

We can expect global warming to have significant effects on the earth.  Climate scientists climate models simulate climate in the future. There a several models that have been developed, but in general the models results project that global temperature will continue to increase, but show that human decisions and behavior we choose today will determine how dramatically climate will change in the future.