Washington, D.C. -- A framework developed for assessing regional climate change may help scientists, stakeholders and government policy makers address the uncertainty and ambiguity of how predicted global changes will affect regions, and how regional and local decisions can mitigate or exacerbate problems, according to a Penn State geographer.
"Scale matters and global change is the sum of the actions that take place on national, regional and local levels," says Dr. C. Gregory Knight, professor of geography.
Integrated Regional Assessment looks at the problems caused by climate change from an interdisciplinary viewpoint and translates global information to regional and local scales. The framework for integrated regional assessment considers human activities that force climate change, climate change that impacts the economy, a changing economy that elicits responses and the responses that drive human activities. Researchers view these four spheres of influence on the global, regional and even local levels.
"The example of energy production and water consumption in the Middle Atlantic states is a good one," Knight told attendees today (Feb. 18) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. "The implications of burning coal for electrical generation and creating carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas are not simple"
The human activity involved is coal use in power plants and the use of large amounts of water for cooling the plants. The plants produce large amounts of green house gases.
"The collective impact of power plants is their contribution to greenhouse gases which would cause warmer and wetter or warmer and dryer conditions," says Knight. "It is likely that the warmer weather would increase the loss of moisture to the atmosphere more than the slightly increased precipitation will add to the overall water balance creating a net moisture deficit."
Warmer weather may bring on more frequent and more severe droughts in the Northeast. The climate change is also likely to warm up the winter months producing less snow and more rain.
"This could cause rain-on-snow flooding similar to what occurred in 1996," says Knight. "With the ground frozen and drains covered in snow and ice, the water has no where to go except into the streets and basements." Drought, flooding and increased temperatures all have economic and social effects. Higher temperatures will increase the incidence of heat stroke and create a greater demand for air conditioning. A greater demand for air conditioning, increases the demand for electricity and the output of power plants, which will increase the use of cooling water in an already low water situation.
"Choices made in response to demands for more air conditioning could mitigate this problem, but could create other problems at the same time," says Knight, a faculty member in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.
Manufacture of more efficient air conditioners could prevent increased electric requirements, better thermal insulation on houses could reduce air conditioning demands and a reduction in demand would decrease water use and greenhouse gas production. Alternative power plant cooling systems could also reduce water requirements.
A shift to alternative fuels could also decrease greenhouse emissions, and while this has a beneficial global and regional outcome, would be detrimental in local coal producing areas.
"In the 1960s everyone said that improving environmental quality would cost a great many jobs," says Knight. "By the 1970s and 1980s we realized that environmental quality concerns created jobs, however, new jobs were not necessarily created in areas where jobs disappeared." In areas heavily dependent on coal production, any reduction of coal use will create unemployment, and these workers may not be prepared to switch to other jobs. While job retraining is an appropriate response, there will probably be local areas that suffer, even if the regional and global situation improves, says the Penn State geographer.
Not all aspects of global climate change are negative. Positive benefits include a longer period of favorable weather for coastal resorts, decreased costs of snow removal and a longer growing season with less threat of late spring frosts and early fall frosts.
"Ultimately, we need to assess the various pluses and minuses and decide what to do," says Knight. "Integrated regional assessment aims to take scientific information and make it relevant to those on local, regional and national levels who make policy decisions."
Events having no significant impact on a global scale can cause localized economic dislocation. The information, evidence and risks need to be considered before decisions are made.
EDITORS: Dr. Knight may be reached at 814-863-8571 or cgk@psu.edu by email.