Grim surprises on the climate front. Hurricanes are starting to come back for a second hit and an urgent search is underway to determine how imminent the threat of accelerated sea level rise is, Gwynne Dyer writes. Two new things on the climate front this week, both bad news. Hurricanes used to be like drive-by shootings: one pass, one hit and then gone. Now they’re starting to come back for a second hit. And until now scientists only worried about the West Antarctic ice-shelf sliding into the sea (which would add three or four metres to sea-level). But they have just discovered that the main ice-sheet that covers Eastern Antarctica, 10 times bigger, is also in motion (potentially 52 metres of sea-level rise). Why do we keep being ambushed by bad news like this? "Thirty years of climate science has given us so much understanding, and what I now see very clearly as a red thread during that entire journey is that the more we learn about the Earth System, the more reason for concern we have,” Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told me three years ago. “People think we raise the alarm because human pressures are increasing, but that’s not the case at all. It’s just that we are learning how the planet works, and the more we learn the more vulnerable she is.    https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/2023/03/16/grim-surprises-on-the-climate-front.html

A New Report Is Out on Hurricane Ian’s Destructive Path. The Numbers Are Horrific. The category 4 storm was the costliest in Florida’s history. Storm surges rose as high as 15 feet and over 20 inches of rain fell on some communities. Hurricane Ian caused $112.9 billion in damage and at least 156 deaths as it forged a path of destruction across Florida, the Caribbean and southeastern United States, according to a report released Monday by the National Hurricane Center.Sixty-six deaths, all in Florida, were attributed directly to the hurricane’s storm surge, inland flooding, high winds and other impacts in September 2022. In Florida the hurricane caused $109.5 billion in damage, making it the costliest hurricane in state history. Ian was the third-costliest hurricane on record in the United States, after Katrina in 2005 and Harvey in 2017. “Ian made landfall in a region extremely vulnerable to storm surge, and the exact track, strong winds, and large storm size … contributed to the widespread devastating impacts,” One preliminary study concluded that human-induced climate change increased Hurricane Ian’s rainfall rates by more than 10 percent, according to researchers at Stony Brook University and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.  Ian peaked as a category 5 hurricane packing 161 mile-an-hour winds before making landfall in southwest Florida on Sept. 28, 2022 as a category 4 storm. The hurricane’s greatest hazard was its storm surge, which claimed 41 lives. Ian also produced 15 tornadoes, with all but one occurring in Florida. Some of the tornadoes caused injuries and considerable damage.        https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03042023/hurricane-ian-destruction/

Animals and People Are Clashing More Frequently Thanks to Climate Change, New Study Says.  Climate change is driving more conflicts between humans and wildlife, as expanding development, deepening drought and quickly changing ecosystems force animals and people into new territories where they’re more likely to encounter each other, a new study says. Experts have long called for a concerted effort to address these human-wildlife clashes, which can lead to property damage, as well as injuries and death for both humans and animals. In fact, human-wildlife conflicts are already the leading cause of decline and extinction among large mammals, the researchers said, which can trigger “the transformation of entire ecosystems.” The encounters can also compound financial struggles for communities and are costing the global economy billions of dollars every year, the scientists added. The study, published Monday by University of Washington researchers in the journal Nature Climate Change, compiled and examined 30 years of research on the subject, spanning every continent except Antarctica. Taken altogether, the research showed an alarming rise of consequences from the encounters, which the study’s authors said highlights the “extraordinary breadth” of the problem.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        The second study, published Jan. 31 in the journal PLOS Biology, found that attacks on humans by carnivorous animals have increased steadily since 1950, linked largely to growing human populations in new areas.Monday’s study found that in just 30 years, the killing of polar bears by humans tripled in Canada, the number of whales that became entangled in fishing gear rose 400 percent, shark attacks on humans jumped 360 percent and deadly encounters generally increased in several countries, including Nepal, Tanzania, Mexico, Kenya and South Sudan. In South Sudan, 23 people died from crocodile attacks between 2018 and 2020 alone. “We were surprised that it’s so globally prevalent, this was one of the big takeaways of this paper,” Briana Abrahms, a wildlife biologist from the University of Washington and the lead author of the Nature Climate Change study, told The Guardian.         https://us2.campaign-archive.com/?e=446e134dd4&u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=18446491c2