Puget Sound waters left sweltering after double punch from the drought and the Blob

By Jessica Payne, Environmental Assessment Program communications manager

Everyone in Washington is feeling the heat this summer, and Puget Sound is no exception. It's been hot and dry, with all kinds of weather records being set. These unusually hot temperatures don't end at the water's edge. We're also seeing the record-breaking warm water temperatures from “the Blob” of North Pacific Ocean water that made its way through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into Puget Sound late last year.

“The Blob entered Puget Sound on a massive scale in the fall of 2014 and rapidly changed conditions for temperature and also oxygen,” said Dr. Christopher Krembs, Ecology senior oceanographer. “We’re measuring water temperatures 4° F higher than normal from our past 25 years of record keeping. We’re seeing the warm water everywhere, from Olympia to Bellingham.”

Monitoring suggests that these warm conditions are having many negative consequences on the Puget Sound marine environment. This year we've seen increasing harmful algae blooms, increasing and early shellfish closures, lower dissolved oxygen levels, and unfavorable conditions for salmon and other cold-loving marine species.

Why is Puget Sound warm?

Puget Sound waters have been hit with a double-whammy. Late last year, "the Blob" Was followed by an extremely warm winter and our usual snowpack didn’t form in the mountains. We rely on this melting snow to drive our river flows in the spring and summer. Without snow to melt and flow down our rivers, Puget Sound does not have enough estuarine circulation to push the Blob out of Puget Sound. Decreased circulation can lead to low oxygen conditions and allow pollution to hang around longer.

Our Changing Climate: Greenland ice still melting ... just a bit slower

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center say Greenland’s ice continues to melt away at a brisk pace. It’s just melting a little slower than some feared it might.

These reports from the Seattle Times and KPLU Radio detail the researchers' findings.

How much and how fast Greenland’s ice melts is relevant to Washingtonians. That’s because all of the water from the melted ice is expected to raise sea levels, and that poses a threat to the communities along Puget Sound and Washington’s coast.

Responding to and preparing for sea-level rise are key components of the state’s climate change response strategy, which was released in early April. Here’s a recent news story about the strategy from The Columbian, along with Ecology’s news release announcing the strategy.

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Our Changing Climate: Shifting zones and NASA's treasure trove

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

Catching up on some recent interesting climate change news...

Shifting climate zones

First, here are a couple of articles on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s updated plant hardiness map – one from USA TODAY, the other from the Associated Press.

The new map uses 30 years of weather data gathered from 1976 to 2005 and is more precise than the 1990 version, showing smaller areas and accounting for higher elevations and bodies of water that can influence temperature.

Essentially, the map shows climate zones are shifting. Here’s a link to it.

News from NASA

Check out the news archive on NASA’s climate change website. It offers a treasure trove of interesting information on climate issues.

For example, scroll down to the entry that talks about 2011 being the ninth-warmest year on record. It contains a video with a neat time-lapse view of changing global temperatures over the past 100-plus years.

Other highlights include clouds that are lowering, concerns about deteriorating coral reefs, and the mapping of Earth’s trees. Give it a look.

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Our Changing Climate: More about WA's shrinking glaciers

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

The Peninsula Daily News recently published this article on melting glaciers in Olympic National Park.

(Coincidentally, it was published right before last week’s big snow and ice storm.)

You can find more here about the study and see some striking photos that show how much specific glaciers have melted off over the decades. The web page gives as a good summary of the study and puts it in context with melting glaciers worldwide.

In case you missed the “Our Changing Climate” post on Jan. 9, the Yakima Herald-Republic published this story about melting glaciers on Mount Adams.

For more information on Cascade Mountains glaciers, check out the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project from Nichols College in Massachusetts.

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Our Changing Climate: Mapping greenhouse gas emitters

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a map showing the largest single-source emitters of greenhouse gases in each state.

The New York Times published this story about the map and what it shows.

Check it out. Pretty interesting.

For more information about greenhouse gas emissions in Washington, see the offerings on this Ecology website.

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Our Changing Climate: Mount Adams glaciers disappearing

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

Over the weekend, the Yakima Herald-Republic published this interesting article about how warming temperatures are melting glaciers on Mount Adams.

The photo of Mount Adams is from the U.S. Geological Survey.

For more information on Cascade Mountains glaciers, check out the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project from Nichols College in Massachusetts.

On another note, the Kitsap Sun had this recent blog post on sea level rise. It stems from a reader’s reply to a story on high tides, which stems from Ecology’s call for people to be on the lookout for so-called “king tides.”

You can read more about Ecology’s “king tides” project here. And you can see the photos of high tides that people submitted to Ecology.

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Our Changing Climate: More floods, drought on the way?

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a new report that concludes climate change will cause more flooding and drought conditions.

This Washington Post story notes:

“The report — the culmination of a two-year process involving 100 scientists and policy experts — suggests that researchers are far more confident about the prospect of more intense heat waves and heavy downpours than they are about how global warming is affecting hurricanes and tornadoes. But the new analysis also speaks to a broader trend: The world is facing a new reality of more extreme weather, and policymakers and business alike are beginning to adjust.”

In addition, here’s a piece that ran in the Vancouver Sun in British Columbia, which focuses on the work of an international team of scientists who say “a massive release of greenhouse gases likely caused the world's worst extinction.”

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Our Changing Climate: Pine beetles and other news

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

Here are some links to some recent news articles related to climate change:

• The Seattle Times reports on the continuing advance of the pine beetle and the threats it poses to Northwest trees.
  
  
• The Seattle Times also published this guest column on how ocean acidification threatens marine conservation and resource management.
  
  
• This piece talks about the “biggest jump ever seen” in climate-warming gases.
  
  
• Here are two takes on California’s move to establish a cap-and-trade system to limit emissions – this one from the Los Angeles Times, and this from the New York Times.

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Our Changing Climate: Melting ice means more Arctic ship traffic?

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

The Seattle Times has this interesting story about how less ice in the Arctic is expected to mean more ship traffic in the region.

Melting, thinning ice would open up more navigable waters for increased shipping of goods, more scientific exploration and more tourism activity.

The catch is the United States is in danger of lagging behind in exploration efforts because its icebreaking vessels are so antiquated or underpowered.

The Times article describes how the nation’s two heavy-duty icebreakers are idled in Seattle. U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington is involved in trying to sort things out.

In other news, The Olympian reports that some Thurston County business owners and homeowners are benefiting from their investments in energy efficiency.

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Our Changing Climate: Walking our talk (part 2)

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

I’ve written previously about Ecology’s Carbon Smart initiative. The effort aims to reduce our own climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions and also help other state agencies, businesses and individuals.

Here are two more ways that we are working to “walk the talk”:

• See this recent blog post on electric vehicle charging stations now in use at Ecology’s headquarters in Lacey.

The charging stations are free to anyone who wants to use them, not just Ecology employees. That’s a requirement of state law.

The stations provide both 120 volts and 208 volts for charging.

• We’re also offering a repair station for those Ecology employees who telecommute to work at Lacey HQ via bicycle. You can read about that here on our Carbon Smart web page.

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Our Changing Climate: Policy, politics and what people actually see

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

Here are recent, interesting articles and newspaper editorials on climate change policy and politics:

• Syndicated columnist Neal Peirce writes about how more and more business leaders are realizing that addressing climate change makes business sense.
  
  
• The Associated Press offers this special report about climate change denial in the United States.

And here are some news reports on what people actually see happening around them. A couple of them are older, but I just came across them recently:

• KING-TV has this report on a Greenland glacier that is melting away more rapidly than expected.
  
  
• Here’s an Oregon Public Broadcasting report that focuses on how Northwest tribes are seeing changes in their sacred “first foods.”
  
  
• And a retired horticultural researcher writes about the changes he has observed in the Wenatchee area.

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Our Changing Climate: Resources for students

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

from the EPA website A Student's Guide to Global Climate Change

Depending on where you live, the K-12 school year either is under way or preparing to start. So it makes sense to offer some kid-friendly climate change resources.

First, check out Ecology’s climate resource web page for students and teachers.

Then you can dive into these links provided to us by Team Frogger, a group of young summer camp participants, and their counselor, Michelle Dembinksi, at Camp Price in Wisconsin. Michelle said the kids came across our climate change web offerings while doing a project. They liked what they saw, and then they offered up some other resources they found.

I've traded messages with Michelle about using some of these links on our resource page. While we're working on that, you can look them over:

• Green buildings
  
  
• Information on Earth Day and other issues
  
  
• Environmental resources for kids
  
  
• All about flower pollination
  
  
• Environmental information from a school in Eugene, Ore.
  
  
• A study on how air pollution impacts kids
  
  
• A British website on clean air

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Our Changing Climate: How about that weather?

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

ABC News led its evening newscast last night (Monday, Aug. 15) with a report about the extreme weather that we’re seeing around the world. Click here to watch the report.

Note the comments about how weather conditions are hurting farmers and the agricultural industry. Yesterday here in Washington, Gov. Gregoire asked U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to determine whether to designate the entire state of Washington a farm disaster area due to weather-related productions delays and crop losses.

The delays are the result of cold and wet weather conditions in every corner of the state throughout the spring and summer, according to a Governor’s Office news release.

“Everyone knows we’ve had lousy weather this spring and summer, but most of us don’t suffer serious economic consequences as a result,” Gov. Gregoire said. “Farmers across the state have watched their crops develop late or fail to thrive during this year’s cold and wet weather. ...”

So, yes, there’s a lot of weird weather out there. Everywhere, it seems.

The ABC report makes the direct tie to climate change as the cause. That reflects the general trend in the scientific community toward identifying specific extreme weather events as a result of climate change.

That view has changed over the past few years. Even though extreme weather was an expected impact of climate change, climate scientists were reluctant to say climate change caused a specific weather event at a specific point in time.

In terms of climate science here in Washington, Ecology generally follows the lead of the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington. Group members still are leery of making such direct, specific ties.

Ecology’s climate change portal also offers some information about extreme weather in Washington. Some of it is a little outdated, but the main points hold true.

Finally, this USA Today report focuses on how U.S. cities are trying to react to extreme weather events, no matter the cause.

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Our Changing Climate: Mapping Climate Change

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Air Quality Program

A friend sent a link to an interesting website, Climate Hot Map, offered by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

It includes a clickable map that shows how climate change is impacting and could impact places all over the world, including in Washington. (The photo, which is not on the website, shows the receding South Cascade Glacier in Washington's Cascade Mountains.)

The site also provides a lot of information on climate impacts on people and different aspects of the environment.

My friend wrote: “Especially under the People icon, you can see issues related to human health, food, water use and economic costs (just the stuff most people care about, quite a lot in the USA). Also other icons you can check are water (too much, too little), oceans (sea level, acidity, ice), ecosystems and temperatures (air, ocean, water, ground).”

Check it out and see what you find.

In Washington, one of the impacts that poses concerns is rising sea levels and tides. Here’s a recent KPLU report that explores the subject.