Description

Well one thing I have noticed is that the severity of storms is on the rise (not all weather systems but the on average). In 2006 in the Mount Baker area (~30 miles east of Bellingham) some 18 inches of rain fell in a short period of time (24-48 hours) and when I visit the rivers draining this peak the damage to the riparian ecosystems (and to some human infrastructure) is astounding.

This is not to say that rivers have not flooded in the past and that these floods were not in fact a factor in maintaining rich ecological assemblages. The worry is that these events at the extremes are becoming more frequent and they are also pushing the limits of what we have planned for with regards to 'natural' disasters. If floods of this severity (and larger) occur with too great a frequency then the riparian forests and wetlands will not be able to re-establish and create rich habitat for a myriad of organisms (these riparian corridors/weaving and shifting ecotones are some of the most biologically productive and diverse areas.

This will also lead to greater erosion of soil, rock, sand etc and this will cause problems for these communities and all downstream (resivors will silt up, river beds will be raised which will lead to added flooding and undermining of road and bridges and levees and so on. All this added silt will smother the gravel spawning bed of the salmon which are such important components of the Northwest ecology and with the increase in water temps. and other factors the salmon may not be with us for long.

If this had been an isolated (but quite extream event) then I would not really worry but these events are becoming much more common. When I lived in Eugene in the late 90's and early 2000's we had occasion to shatter are old yearly precipitation record by a large margin. Now by itself this was not enough to be up in arms about, it fit into to the statistical model. The very next year we completely shattered the brand new record just set.

This did not in any way fit within the probability models, this was a clear indication that things were changing quite dramatically. I could go on about the average loss of almost half the annual snow pack in the Cascade Mountains in just my life time. I could talk about the glaciers I have visited in these same mountains which have retreated uphill from their old terminuses,the fact that now we have a good number of humid days in summer and even rain with greater frequency (both very rare in our modified medditeranian/marine climate west of the mountains, I figure this is due to the fact that the atmoshpere now holds ~%5 more moisture (that is a huge number considering the volume of the atmosphere) than it did prior to industrialization and many other examples that are wound up the general decline of the environment.

The oceanic-atmoshperic system is so complex (with many gaps in our knowledge still) and the changes we are causing are so unprecedented in scale, severity and speed and these changes are happening to living systems which are so complex and diverse that we still have much to learn and the destructive behaviors that ramp up climate change cause so much other damage and blend synergistically with pretty much every form of envrionmental degradation. Given all this it is hard to say that some phenomenon we are observing is caused by climate change alone, in fact climate change binds together with and both intesifies and is intesified by things such as loss of biodiversity, deforestation, concentration of toxic substances and so on, and so on we have to look at this is the most holistic way possible and I do believe that addressing climate change quickly will, at least in large part, address the many other crucial environmental issues we face since this is one finite, interconnedted and interdendent system (our biosphere).
- Nick Sky, Trader Joes and North Cascades Institute