Uncertain Future: Climate Change and Its Effects on Puget Sound
Report reveals climate change in Puget Sound is a "force to be reckoned with"
OLYMPIA -- A new report commissioned by the Puget Sound Action Team (Action Team) reveals that a warming climate has already profoundly altered the Puget Sound environment and that bigger, more severe problems are likely to be in store.
"Climate change is clearly a force to be reckoned with," said Brad Ack, Director of the Action Team. "It's like a slow-motion natural disaster. This report shows that change is already happening and that more changes are inevitable. We need to begin to plan for and adapt to these changes now."
The report, prepared by the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group (CIG), is the first detailed assessment of how climate change has affected--and will continue to affect--the Puget Sound environment. Led by Amy Snover, Ph.D., and Phil Mote, Ph.D., a team of CIG researchers combed through years of climate records and scientific literature, and conducted research of its own to put the report together.
A 36-page report written for the layperson, Uncertain Future: Climate Change and its Effects on Puget Sound, focuses on the consequences of a warmer climate on the larger Puget Sound ecosystem, including what the future might hold for snowpack, stream flow, water quality, precipitation patterns, air and water temperatures, and the plants and animals that call Puget Sound home.
Select findings include:
- Pacific Northwest temperatures have been rising faster than the global average.
- Puget Sound river and stream flows are changing.
- Glaciers in the Cascade and Olympic Mountains have been retreating for over 50 years.
- Lake Washington has warmed substantially and there is evidence of rising temperatures in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
- Scientists project that Puget Sound waters will warm in the future, potentially putting many species at risk including plankton, the foundation of Puget Sound's food web.
- More of the region's winter precipitation is likely to fall as rain rather than snow, increasing flooding in Puget Sound watersheds.
- The rate of sea-level rise in the Pacific Northwest is projected to be faster than the global average, and is likely to increase both the pace and extent of the erosion and nearshore habitat loss already affecting Puget Sound shorelines, especially in south Puget Sound.
- Lower summer and fall flows and warming waters, along with increases in winter flooding, would further stress Puget Sound salmon.
- Increased likelihood of algal blooms and low oxygen concentrations in bottom waters.
- Changes caused by a warming climate are likely to reverberate across the Puget Sound ecosystem in complex and unpredictable ways, disrupting crucial interactions between Puget Sound plants and animals and their environment.
Implications for the future
This report lays out the inevitability of climate change in the Puget Sound region. Human activities during the past 150 years have committed our planet to a changing climate in the 21st century. Further, scientists say that given the residence times of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (several decades) and the long time it takes for the ocean to fully communicate with the atmosphere (several centuries), even if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide today, warming would continue for many decades.
"Increasing our capacity to cope with the large-scale climate impacts facing Puget Sound is a critical challenge," said Ack. "The ultimate impact will depend not only on future levels of greenhouse gases but also on choices we make in the region. By incorporating the projected effects of climate change into our planning, management and development, we may be able to increase the Sound's and our society's resilience to climate change."
Continue reading this report from the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group:
Uncertain Future: Climate Change and Its Effects on Puget Sound
