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Watching the Weather: In Conversation with Meteorologists Jeff Berardelli and Chris Gloninger · Simmer Down

• 0:00
  Kathleen Biggins: We are very excited to talk about this important topic with you.
• 0:04
  Kathleen Biggins: Because wherever we live, in the north, the south, the east, or the west, or in the mainland, I think all of us have noticed that the weather outside is changing.
• 0:14
  Kathleen Biggins: The patterns are different than the ones we remember when we were growing up.
• 0:18
  Kathleen Biggins: Whether it's their summers that have gotten hotter and longer, or our rainstorms that feel so much more ferocious and dangerous, hailstones that are getting bigger, or tornadoes that are bedeviling areas that used to be deemed safe.
• 0:34
  Kathleen Biggins: How are these events being impacted by climate?
• 0:39
  Kathleen Biggins: What is instead really just being impacted by normal weather patterns or just bad luck?
• 0:46
  Kathleen Biggins: And what can we attribute to climate change?
• 0:49
  Kathleen Biggins: Importantly, what can we expect in the future?
• 0:52
  Kathleen Biggins: And what tools do we have to prepare?
• 0:55
  Kathleen Biggins: And the answers to these questions are really important because not only do these climate changes or these weather trading patterns impact us and how we feel as far as safety in our homes, in our communities, or on our roadways, it also impacts our economy in big ways and small.
• 1:14
  Kathleen Biggins: In big ways because these weather events are harming big sectors of our economy, including agriculture, energy, water management, recreation, tourism, forestry, fisheries, and the list goes on.
• 1:29
  Kathleen Biggins: And in smaller ways, because it impacts each of us, because as taxpayers, we are on the hook for the cost of these bigger weather events and repairing our communities, and also for the cost of the new infrastructure to prepare, because nature is playing by a new set of rules.
• 1:48
  Kathleen Biggins: To help us really drill down on the nexus of climate change and weather, we have two wonderful meteorologists with us today.
• 1:57
  Kathleen Biggins: The first is Jeff Beridelli, who is the chief meteorologist and climate specialist for the NBC affiliate station in Tampa, Florida.
• 2:08
  Kathleen Biggins: Jeff has over two decades of experience in the area, and he may look familiar to us because he was a correspondent covering national climate stories for CBS.
• 2:18
  Kathleen Biggins: Our second guest is Chris Gloninger.
• 2:21
  Kathleen Biggins: He is the senior climate scientist at Woods Hole Group, which is in Massachusetts, but he too has a long tenure in meteorology.
• 2:29
  Kathleen Biggins: In fact, he was the person who first put together a weekly segment on climate.
• 2:34
  Kathleen Biggins: He was a meteorologist in Boston.
• 2:37
  Kathleen Biggins: Subsequently, Chris was in the news because when he moved to Des Moines, Iowa, to be a meteorologist and to bring the messaging that climate change was indeed impacting that community, he ran into some pushback.
• 2:52
  Kathleen Biggins: In fact, he ran into some harassing emails and even a death threat.
• 2:57
  Kathleen Biggins: Now, to be fair, um, when Chris left the station, he held up reams of emails that were from viewers that were lauding his efforts and commending him for his efforts for two very different reactions to his efforts to bring the climate messaging into that market.
• 3:15
  Kathleen Biggins: Thank you both for joining us.
• 3:18
  Kathleen Biggins: We are so excited to have you here.
• 3:20
  Kathleen Biggins: So, Jeff, let me start with you and just ask a very basic question, um, but one that I think kind of sets the table for everyone.
• 3:29
  Kathleen Biggins: What is the difference between climate and weather?
• 3:34
  Kathleen Biggins: And what are the weather patterns that we are seeing that we are sure are connected with climate?
• 3:40
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, I might this might take a half hour or so, but no, we'll uh no, I'm just kidding.
• 3:44
  Jeff Berardelli: We'll we'll make it short.
• 3:45
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, weather is just what happens on a day-to-day basis, right?
• 3:48
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, you know, the weather, the storms that hit us, um, a tornado outbreak, a snowstorm, a hurricane.
• 3:56
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, so it's the weather that changes on a day-to-day basis, whereas climate is kind of the average weather pattern over a long distance of time.
• 4:04
  Jeff Berardelli: Maybe that long distance of time is just a few months, or maybe that long distance of time is a few centuries or more.
• 4:10
  Jeff Berardelli: So that's the difference.
• 4:11
  Jeff Berardelli: The the climate is the average and how the average changes, which is the climate change.
• 4:16
  Jeff Berardelli: And the weather, though, has a lot of variability day to day.
• 4:20
  Jeff Berardelli: And then the second question you asked is what specifically we do we know climate change is impacting in weather?
• 4:26
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, certainly it's impacting heat waves, right?
• 4:29
  Jeff Berardelli: That's an easy one.
• 4:29
  Jeff Berardelli: You raise the baseline temperature of the whole earth by two or three degrees Fahrenheit, and you're gonna get hotter heat waves.
• 4:36
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, we also know that it's producing heavier downpours, so extreme rain events are becoming more extreme.
• 4:41
  Jeff Berardelli: Why?
• 4:42
  Jeff Berardelli: Because with a warmer atmosphere and warmer waters, we can hold more moisture in the atmosphere, we can wring more moisture out like a sponge and create bigger floods.
• 4:51
  Jeff Berardelli: But we also think it's an impact in the jet stream.
• 4:53
  Jeff Berardelli: We also think that it is causing more rapid intensification of hurricanes and potentially uh some of the strong hurricanes are becoming even stronger.
• 5:01
  Jeff Berardelli: The list goes on and on.
• 5:02
  Jeff Berardelli: I don't want to take up too much of your time, but hopefully that gives you a baseline.
• 5:06
  Kathleen Biggins: Yeah, thank you.
• 5:07
  Kathleen Biggins: And I think heat waves are on everyone's mind after this past summer.
• 5:11
  Kathleen Biggins: I mean, we're a hundred days over the 100 degrees, um, and we've been experiencing it in almost all of our communities.
• 5:19
  Kathleen Biggins: Uh, Chris, maybe you could help flesh out some of the areas that are not directly tied um with climate change, but that we are suspicious of because it seems like these patterns are changing everywhere and in almost every weather pattern, if I may say.
• 5:38
  Kathleen Biggins: So, what do we suspect?
• 5:40
  Kathleen Biggins: What are we not as sure of, but that we think might be linked?
• 5:44
  Chris Gloninger: That's a great question, because oftentimes we hear uh false attribution where maybe climate change isn't the root cause, or it's the threat multiplier making a system worse, meaning it'll hold more moisture or the heat wave is a little bit longer.
• 6:00
  Chris Gloninger: But even the science of attribution is changing.
• 6:03
  Chris Gloninger: And one of the things we're not as sure of is the impact on severe weather, and that is defined as tornadoes, uh's uh higher impact events like that.
• 6:15
  Chris Gloninger: But the research is improving, which is promising.
• 6:19
  Chris Gloninger: And in fact, just weeks ago, there was research that found that large hail events, which we weren't really able to make the connection with, uh, large hail events are happening more frequently.
• 6:30
  Chris Gloninger: And the number of those large hail reports, around two inches in diameter or more, which is you start to see damage to roofs and uh to siding, to your cars, we're seeing more of that.
• 6:42
  Chris Gloninger: Less small hail.
• 6:43
  Chris Gloninger: But as the atmosphere becomes more energized, there's more turbulence, there's more lift, we're having large hail reports.
• 6:50
  Chris Gloninger: So even though like the run-of-the-mill tornado, that's going to be really difficult to fine-tune and see the connection.
• 6:57
  Chris Gloninger: But we're starting to see progress being made.
• 7:00
  Chris Gloninger: So you can't call everything climate change, but we're really now beginning with attribution science, Kathleen, to see which events are tied to, whether it be caused by or made worse by climate change.
• 7:13
  Chris Gloninger: But again, severe weather, one of those parts of this, one aspect of the science where we're still needing some improvement.
• 7:22
  Kathleen Biggins: You know, it's fascinating because if you look across many different patterns, including hurricanes, and now as you're saying with Hale, you you are seeing that in some cases we're seeing less of the weaker versions and more of the stronger versions, which makes it harder to put your finger on and to explain because perhaps it's not as frequent.
• 7:40
  Kathleen Biggins: But from a girl who grew up in New Orleans, it's the big ones that you really care about, right?
• 7:45
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, they're the ones that really cause the damage.
• 7:48
  Kathleen Biggins: So that's interesting.
• 7:49
  Jeff Berardelli: That's a really good point you make because that's what we think is going to happen with climate change.
• 7:53
  Jeff Berardelli: It's possible there may be uh less tropical systems overall, maybe we're not sure about that.
• 7:59
  Jeff Berardelli: But what we're pretty sure about is that the stronger systems have become even stronger.
• 8:04
  Jeff Berardelli: And about 85% of the damage in hurricanes is caused by cat threes and above.
• 8:09
  Jeff Berardelli: So, what you really care about, like you mentioned, are the really major hurricanes because they're the ones that really cause most of the damage.
• 8:16
  Jeff Berardelli: So that is an interesting aspect you brought up, which is happening also in the hurricane space, we think.
• 8:22
  Kathleen Biggins: Yeah.
• 8:23
  Kathleen Biggins: So let me ask you a question.
• 8:26
  Kathleen Biggins: Since you are both um working or have worked in more conservative areas, do you have a sense that the changing patterns that so many of us are noticing are changing opinions about whether climate change is happening or whether it's something that we need to take action on quickly?
• 8:46
  Kathleen Biggins: And I guess I'll go first to Chris and then to Jeff.
• 8:51
  Chris Gloninger: Okay.
• 8:51
  Chris Gloninger: I do think that there is some momentum when you have these larger events.
• 8:57
  Chris Gloninger: However, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University, when they do their public opinion polling, which is fascinating, they're still seeing a bit of a disconnect.
• 9:07
  Chris Gloninger: There's a large number of people that still don't believe that they're being personally affected by climate change, whereas really the majority of us are, whether it be by that longer heat wave, that stronger hurricane, the floods that produced uh more water and more rainfall.
• 9:23
  Chris Gloninger: And the other shift that we're seeing is there may be more buy-in in the fact that the climate is changing, but we still have that breakdown in the cause.
• 9:34
  Chris Gloninger: And that is where you have to look at the politics of it, unfortunately.
• 9:38
  Chris Gloninger: And I experienced this in Iowa where you could talk to a farmer who was maybe a little bit more conservative who would say, yes, the climate is changing, but we just don't know if humans are affecting it.
• 9:49
  Chris Gloninger: And I love this statement from Anthony Leiserwitz from the uh BL program on climate change communication.
• 9:57
  Chris Gloninger: And he said, climate and atmospheric scientists have more evidence that climate change is caused by humans than smoking causes cancer, than the medical community has that smoking causes cancer.
• 10:08
  Chris Gloninger: So if people really knew that, I think it internalized it, it would open a lot of minds, hopefully.
• 10:13
  Chris Gloninger: But we still have that breakdown where it's that political divide where they see the changes, but they're not quite able to say humans are causing it.
• 10:22
  Jeff Berardelli: I would concur.
• 10:23
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, there's so many people, people I know personally, friends of mine, or people that I like, for instance, uh I often take uh a ride share to work, and there'll be people in the in the in the cab or the driver, and and so many people still say this to me, and it boggles my mind, which is well, you know, but is it really humans that are causing it?
• 10:43
  Jeff Berardelli: Like there seems to be a disconnect there.
• 10:45
  Jeff Berardelli: I think that Chris is right, that we see this increase in extreme weather.
• 10:49
  Jeff Berardelli: People see it on the news.
• 10:51
  Jeff Berardelli: They think, in fact, that that extreme weather is getting more extreme, uh, but they still are not willing or able to say that it's humans that are are causing this.
• 11:02
  Jeff Berardelli: And the what the I use the word willing because I oftentimes think that people are very resistant to that, especially depending upon which side of the political aisle they are on, uh, to admitting that humans could be causing climate change if it isn't popular among their group of people.
• 11:20
  Kathleen Biggins: Right.
• 11:21
  Kathleen Biggins: Well, it's interesting because I think there was just an opinion study that was released in the next last week or two, and and it showed that there had been quite a lot of movement among liberals and Democrats, and um saying that the main reason they were concerned about climate change was indeed um these uh weather weirding events and the dangers that they were causing amongst some conservative Republicans, actually, the disbelief had increased instead of going in the opposite direction.
• 11:48
  Kathleen Biggins: So it does seem to be very polarized still, like so much of society is today.
• 11:54
  Kathleen Biggins: But one of the things that we do know is that meteorologists are trusted messengers.
• 12:00
  Kathleen Biggins: You guys um come into the homes and you tell people how to stay safe, you project the weather.
• 12:05
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, so back about what, in 2010, um, a scant majority actually believed that climate change wasn't caused by you men, wasn't a big deal.
• 12:17
  Kathleen Biggins: And then by 2020, it was almost 95% the opposite.
• 12:21
  Kathleen Biggins: So, in one decade, amazing change amongst your cohort.
• 12:25
  Kathleen Biggins: Can you tell us what it was that brought such swift?
• 12:30
  Kathleen Biggins: And what tools do you have now that make you so confident um that climate change is indeed causing these weather challenges?
• 12:38
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, and I'll reverse the order and then we'll start with Jeff and then go to Chris.
• 12:43
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, I think it is a lot of things, right?
• 12:46
  Jeff Berardelli: First of all, it's a lot more information available and it's available at our fingertips now.
• 12:50
  Jeff Berardelli: 10, 15 years ago, it wasn't as readily available.
• 12:54
  Jeff Berardelli: It wasn't as readily talked about.
• 12:56
  Jeff Berardelli: Also, I think we had a lot of, you know, a lot of older meteorologists have retired who may not have been willing to accept climate change because they just weren't taught that in school, and a lot of newer meteorologists who were taught climate change in school that are now emerging into the field.
• 13:10
  Jeff Berardelli: I think also I will give a lot of credit to Climate Central.
• 13:13
  Jeff Berardelli: Climate Central has done tremendous work in educating meteorologists and providing them with the resources to use on the air.
• 13:21
  Jeff Berardelli: Without those resources, there's not much we could do because we don't have the time to compile data and statistics.
• 13:28
  Jeff Berardelli: But being able to produce those statistics every week, it not only gives us something to use on the air, but it also gives us something to look at and say, wow, these are some pretty robust changes.
• 13:39
  Jeff Berardelli: And Climate Central has done a really good job at allowing meteorologists to know these resources are there and help meteorologists to understand the climate and also help them to know where to find the resources and how to talk about climate change.
• 13:53
  Jeff Berardelli: And probably, by the way, not be scared of the fact that some of our viewers are not willing to accept the truth about climate change.
• 14:02
  Chris Gloninger: And Jeff nailed it.
• 14:03
  Chris Gloninger: I mean, if you look at uh climate change and the growth that we've seen, the Climate Matters program started in South Carolina, so which I think is also a testament to the fact that this is not a political issue.
• 14:14
  Chris Gloninger: Jim Gandhi, one of the first meteorologists to talk about it, was really the grandfather of that program in a conservative part of the state nonetheless, not right in Charleston that's seeing rising sea level right out their back door, which you tend to see more buy-in in those communities that see it day to day, right?
• 14:31
  Chris Gloninger: But meteorologists, you have to keep in mind that we, and I guess in my past life I'm now referring to it as we since I'm out of TV, but typically hold a myopic view of the weather.
• 14:41
  Chris Gloninger: We're looking at, you know, seven, maybe 10 days at a time, and then you get to that 10-day period, you reset, and you're not really looking at the trends because you're you're really focused on how to tell the weather story of the day.
• 14:53
  Chris Gloninger: And the weather story of the day, as Jeff said much earlier today, is day-to-day weather, not climate.
• 14:59
  Chris Gloninger: So while as a professional group, we're much larger than just broadcast.
• 15:03
  Chris Gloninger: We have academia, we have the government, we have, you know, uh other the private sector.
• 15:09
  Chris Gloninger: Uh I think we may have been some of the last in the profession to kind of hop on and see the trends.
• 15:16
  Chris Gloninger: And I think that's one of the reasons why, because we just have that shorter span of really forecasting the future in just a smaller amount of time.
• 15:26
  Kathleen Biggins: That makes sense.
• 15:27
  Kathleen Biggins: Um and I will say that um Climate Central is also uh a group that we look to for a lot of the information that we use in our presentations and we're very familiar with climate matters.
• 15:38
  Kathleen Biggins: And I remember being on an airplane and sitting next to someone who I didn't know and just chatting, and she said, Did you notice that the meteorologists are talking about climate change?
• 15:46
  Kathleen Biggins: And she had no idea of what we did.
• 15:49
  Kathleen Biggins: And I and I thought that was um remarkable um because we were talking about the weather and and and she was using that as an example of how um she was noticing the difference and how she found it credible.
• 16:03
  Kathleen Biggins: But you also said something, Chris, about being short-term in your perspective.
• 16:09
  Kathleen Biggins: And one of the things that as climate communicators, I think I struggle with, and I think many struggle with, is how do we paint the longer-term impacts, the climate impacts that are coming, say mid-century, um, in a way that people can understand and accept.
• 16:26
  Kathleen Biggins: Have you had any experience with that?
• 16:29
  Kathleen Biggins: And do you have any um any tools or or or advice on how to help people understand that the the changes we're seeing today are just the beginning, and what we will see tomorrow will be much more extreme.
• 16:42
  Kathleen Biggins: And Chris, you want to start and go back?
• 16:45
  Chris Gloninger: I think in my new profession, and Woods Hole Group is an environmental and coastal engineering company.
• 16:50
  Chris Gloninger: And what we do is we help municipalities, we help private clients, we hate that we help states work on climate projections from modeling probabilistically sea level rise and impacts of stronger storms to doing kind of hazard planning.
• 17:06
  Chris Gloninger: And we have projects that are extremely complicated.
• 17:10
  Chris Gloninger: And if you look at the infrastructure that needs to be fixed or improved or rebuilt, uh, the price tag of that, the cost of that, I think would would push the priority of climate change up in the issues in our election.
• 17:28
  Chris Gloninger: One project I'm working on, a mile and a quarter structured roadway, which may need to be raised by um anywhere from two to four feet, may cost anywhere from 100 to 500 million dollars.
• 17:43
  Chris Gloninger: That's not the stormwater infrastructure, that's the physical lifting of the road out of the critical elevation of that flood zone in the future.
• 17:51
  Chris Gloninger: That's one road in one town when you have so many of us that live along the coastline.
• 17:57
  Chris Gloninger: That is a scary thought about how much this is going to cost.
• 18:00
  Chris Gloninger: And I say to people, even if you can't really picture storms getting stronger, you might not be able to think about heat waves getting longer.
• 18:08
  Chris Gloninger: I just ask people if you're worried about the economy right now, think about billion-dollar disasters happening more frequently than every week and a half to two weeks.
• 18:17
  Chris Gloninger: Think about what happens when insurance companies continue to pull out of communities.
• 18:21
  Chris Gloninger: Think about the infrastructure that needs to be replaced or um revamped.
• 18:26
  Chris Gloninger: That is an economy that could be in trouble.
• 18:29
  Chris Gloninger: So worry about the economy still, but look at it in the future and what climate change will do.
• 18:35
  Chris Gloninger: And I think that will help people kind of bring it to life and see how urgent of an issue it really is.
• 18:42
  Jeff Berardelli: I totally agree.
• 18:43
  Jeff Berardelli: I think like everything else, you need to speak the person's language.
• 18:46
  Jeff Berardelli: So meet them where they are.
• 18:48
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, I would say that right there is how I can reach some people.
• 18:53
  Jeff Berardelli: That's my daughter, Gracie.
• 18:55
  Jeff Berardelli: She's uh she's almost three years old.
• 18:57
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh, can you see that?
• 18:58
  Jeff Berardelli: Can you can you?
• 18:59
  Jeff Berardelli: I think I think you can probably see it in the corner.
• 19:01
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, and some people can be reached through, you know, hey, we got to leave the world a livable place for our daughters and sons, for our children and grandchildren.
• 19:11
  Jeff Berardelli: But I don't think everyone speaks that language.
• 19:13
  Jeff Berardelli: I think Chris is right.
• 19:14
  Jeff Berardelli: Some people speak the economic language.
• 19:16
  Jeff Berardelli: Here in Florida, the easiest way to get people to listen is to talk about how hurricanes are getting worse.
• 19:21
  Jeff Berardelli: Oh, and by the way, insurance premiums have like doubled, you know, tripled.
• 19:26
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, they're like four times what the average um homeowners' insurance is across the United States here in Florida.
• 19:32
  Jeff Berardelli: People see it every, and it's a lot.
• 19:34
  Jeff Berardelli: Some people are being forced out of the state of Florida because they can't afford insurance anymore.
• 19:38
  Jeff Berardelli: So they that's an easy way to get them on board.
• 19:41
  Jeff Berardelli: Again, same thing though, you run into the same problem, which is okay, climate change is making hurricanes worse, but is it really us humans?
• 19:47
  Jeff Berardelli: You're still running into that pushback.
• 19:50
  Jeff Berardelli: Although, interestingly enough, despite the fact that Florida has become, you know, a red Earth state than it was, um, the FAU has done studies, Florida Atlantic University, and shows that generally speaking, Floridians' understanding of climate change and even the understanding that humans are driving it are is generally better than other states, which shows you what it means when you you know you're living on the front lines of climate change.
• 20:15
  Jeff Berardelli: People here see the the impacts of it a little more often.
• 20:19
  Jeff Berardelli: So I would say, um, in summary, uh talking about the things that people care about, and it's different everywhere.
• 20:28
  Kathleen Biggins: That makes sense.
• 20:28
  Kathleen Biggins: And you're in Florida, which is perhaps the state most vulnerable to climate change, um, on a wide range of metric.
• 20:35
  Kathleen Biggins: So that that makes sense.
• 20:37
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, I just had I just had uh so I just put out a study with the help of the Department of Energy.
• 20:41
  Jeff Berardelli: Really, it was their study, and then I localized it.
• 20:43
  Jeff Berardelli: We found that major hurricanes, and this may not happen, but it may.
• 20:48
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, we found that by around 2066 on, and this was a difficult one to communicate because it's 40 years in the future, but we found that hurricanes from 2066 through uh 2100, uh, major hurricanes could more than triple here in the Tampa Bay area.
• 21:02
  Jeff Berardelli: And and that was the case for all of Florida.
• 21:05
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh and what we also found, and what I and that one's that one's question, that's a questionable finding, I say, because it involves changing of circulation patterns.
• 21:14
  Jeff Berardelli: And I think it's hard for the climate models to know exactly how circulation changes may change in the future.
• 21:20
  Jeff Berardelli: But the two things we found that I think are probably even more alarming, because I think that you could realistically say they're probably true, is we found that maximum rainfall rates in the future will increase by about 50%, and maximum wind speeds in hurricanes are gonna increase by around 15 to 20 percent.
• 21:40
  Jeff Berardelli: Both of those are very alarming findings because we already have evidence that both of those things are already changing in that direction.
• 21:46
  Jeff Berardelli: But whether or not storms are going to steer towards the US, I think that's harder to know for sure.
• 21:50
  Jeff Berardelli: But these results are alarming, and yet I got to tell you, a lot of people were like, all right, well, you know, why are you telling me something that's 40 years in the future?
• 21:58
  Jeff Berardelli: So I faced that.
• 21:59
  Jeff Berardelli: Communication challenge every day.
• 22:02
  Kathleen Biggins: So I know there was some discussion among scientists about creating a category six for hurricanes because we were already seeing hurricanes exceed what a category five normally is.
• 22:12
  Kathleen Biggins: Are you a proponent of that?
• 22:14
  Kathleen Biggins: Does that help magnify the the risk in people's minds to have um our categories actually rise up to that level?
• 22:22
  Jeff Berardelli: I think it does what you say it does.
• 22:24
  Jeff Berardelli: It magnifies, I think it I think it at least momentarily when we when we say, all right, now this is going to be a cat six, people are like, oh boy, that means hurricanes are getting worse.
• 22:33
  Jeff Berardelli: I'm sure that fades, though.
• 22:34
  Jeff Berardelli: It you know, you get an awareness spike and then it fades.
• 22:38
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, I think there are a lot of meteorologists who don't think it's necessary because cat fives are already just cataclysmic.
• 22:44
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh so honestly, I don't have a strong opinion on that.
• 22:47
  Jeff Berardelli: I do think it would help to raise awareness at least initially.
• 22:50
  Jeff Berardelli: Chris, I'll let you chime in with what your thoughts on that are.
• 22:54
  Chris Gloninger: Yeah, I think it would be a short-term improvement.
• 22:57
  Chris Gloninger: I look, I we need tools to communicate this.
• 23:02
  Chris Gloninger: And if that is one way that's effective, I think the social science aspect of it is important.
• 23:06
  Chris Gloninger: It shouldn't just be meteorologists making these decisions, it should be social scientists that are able to take that public perception, public opinion on how it resonates with people and see if it's something that should be implemented, right?
• 23:19
  Chris Gloninger: Um I'm on the fence, and I've I've felt the same about even uh naming heat waves.
• 23:27
  Chris Gloninger: I've started to see a little bit of benefit, but when you have consecutive heat waves and considering heat waves are different or defined differently in different areas, that's a little bit difficult to do, right?
• 23:38
  Chris Gloninger: So maybe it's using um like a parameter like uh the climate shift index that uh that uh climate central uses.
• 23:47
  Chris Gloninger: Maybe if it's amplified by climate change by five times, then you know it's worthy of a name.
• 23:53
  Chris Gloninger: I again, I think we really need to work with social science scientists to really help better understand communicating.
• 24:01
  Chris Gloninger: Uh, and I know this is fringe on what you said, Kathleen, but like the the terminology of you know 100-year, thousand-year events also really doesn't resonate with people.
• 24:12
  Chris Gloninger: So those are are things that we need to kind of partner with in the academic world and and try to figure out.
• 24:19
  Jeff Berardelli: So that's I think, I mean, you know this already, Kathleen.
• 24:22
  Jeff Berardelli: We're running into a partisan wall.
• 24:24
  Jeff Berardelli: You know, you can speak to you know forever about this stuff.
• 24:28
  Jeff Berardelli: It's really hard to break through a partisan wall, I think, the ideology wall.
• 24:33
  Jeff Berardelli: That's what I think the real problem is here.
• 24:35
  Jeff Berardelli: So you can think about a million ways to to take this box and wrap it.
• 24:40
  Jeff Berardelli: Maybe we put it, maybe we put the gift in a bag.
• 24:43
  Jeff Berardelli: You know, that's what we're doing, right?
• 24:44
  Jeff Berardelli: We're thinking of different ways that we can kind of message.
• 24:47
  Jeff Berardelli: But the truth is, is once people uh, you know, that who are not willing to accept climate change smell it as anything but, you know, if they if they think that it's just simply a ploy to get them to understand.
• 24:59
  Jeff Berardelli: I I uh I think you understand where I'm coming from.
• 25:01
  Jeff Berardelli: I don't know how much we can accomplish with communication if people are so resistant to hearing the message, especially from people like, let's say, me or Chris, who, you know, maybe we're not the best messenger.
• 25:15
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, and what I what I mean by that is so someone like Jim Gandhi, great messenger, right?
• 25:21
  Jeff Berardelli: Is a longtime meteorologist, you know, in a conservative place.
• 25:25
  Jeff Berardelli: People already trusted him for years.
• 25:27
  Jeff Berardelli: It's tougher when you take someone like me or Chris.
• 25:30
  Jeff Berardelli: Chris did most of his meteorology in Boston.
• 25:32
  Jeff Berardelli: I did a lot of my meteorology in in um in New York City, although I I spent half my life in Florida.
• 25:38
  Jeff Berardelli: So but anyway, you get what I'm saying?
• 25:41
  Jeff Berardelli: It's it's it may be more messenger related than it is communications, the type of communications and the way that we communicate.
• 25:47
  Kathleen Biggins: I have to say though, I was really heartened by those reams of emails that Chris held up on his last about the people who wrote in to thank him and to recognize that he had done something really difficult for to bring this messaging into an area.
• 26:02
  Kathleen Biggins: And yes, you did have a death threat, and yes, you were accused of spreading a liberal propaganda.
• 26:08
  Chris Gloninger: Is that um yeah, I mean, since this isn't uh television, uh I can say a Lib Tard science.
• 26:15
  Chris Gloninger: So the derogatory term for liberals, which again it isn't.
• 26:19
  Chris Gloninger: Uh, and Kathleen, I think the reason why I hopped on the opportunity to bring this back up a year after this the event was no one was willing, no journalist was willing to kind of back up my story that I found a way to connect with viewers, the majority of viewers, this is just a such a small fraction of people that were that were nightly listeners, by finding ways to connect with them on energy independence, which was using renewable energies and wind farms and fiscal responsibility and crafting it in a way that why are we spending billions of dollars for these disasters for people to rebuild in a floodplain or in the same footprint of their home?
• 27:00
  Chris Gloninger: And that worked.
• 27:01
  Chris Gloninger: And you know, no one, no one would be willing to kind of go behind the scenes and and find that my management, even though they hired me to do this, told me to stop talking about it.
• 27:13
  Chris Gloninger: They did a total 180.
• 27:15
  Chris Gloninger: And at that point, I didn't want it to seem like I walked out or gave up or I had enough.
• 27:22
  Chris Gloninger: I I was put up against a wall and I wasn't going to be there not doing the job that I was hired to do.
• 27:28
  Kathleen Biggins: So understandable.
• 27:30
  Chris Gloninger: Yep.
• 27:31
  Kathleen Biggins: So let's um I'm gonna just throw out one belief of mine, and I and and you guys can let me know if it resonates with you.
• 27:39
  Kathleen Biggins: But so much of the pushback um on the right on this issue originated because of the economics back in the 2000s, right?
• 27:50
  Kathleen Biggins: When the policy was wending through Congress and it would have definitely been uh much more expensive to use green energy, and we definitely would have lost jobs, and we definitely would have been less competitive versus China.
• 28:02
  Kathleen Biggins: None of those are true anymore.
• 28:04
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, and and the reality is that clean energy and the transition actually creates more jobs than are currently in fossil fuels.
• 28:14
  Kathleen Biggins: And also, when you add in the cost of infrastructure, as you brought up, Chris, and the other cost of climate, it is so much more expensive to maintain our current path than to switch.
• 28:25
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, and that is resonating more in conservative areas.
• 28:30
  Kathleen Biggins: It just hasn't um necessarily trickled down through the entire political base.
• 28:35
  Kathleen Biggins: But if you talk to a lot of the the people who are governing, they are understanding the economic benefits of this transition in places like Georgia and South Carolina, um, though they aren't quite standing on the rooftops to shout about it, but they they are.
• 28:50
  Kathleen Biggins: So I that that does give me hope.
• 28:53
  Kathleen Biggins: If I could drill down one of the does that give you hope?
• 28:56
  Kathleen Biggins: I hope it does.
• 28:57
  Jeff Berardelli: It does.
• 28:58
  Jeff Berardelli: And I was gonna say there's a big difference between seeing tangible benefits 30 years from now and seeing tangible benefits three years from now.
• 29:04
  Jeff Berardelli: So the passage of the IRA brings jobs right away.
• 29:07
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, but reducing carbon emissions doesn't bring immediate changes in the weather, and I think there's something to that as well.
• 29:16
  Jeff Berardelli: So um, so couching this in jobs, and it is real.
• 29:20
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, a lot of jobs are being created in a lot of especially red areas.
• 29:25
  Jeff Berardelli: There is a very quick, maybe not a political cycle, though.
• 29:29
  Jeff Berardelli: That's the problem.
• 29:30
  Jeff Berardelli: Why should why would politicians act on something if it's not within their political window uh before the next election makes it a little harder?
• 29:37
  Jeff Berardelli: But in the case of this, the IRA, there are results happening within the time that the Biden administration is still actually in office and big ones.
• 29:45
  Jeff Berardelli: So that so this is a way to talk about climate change and not actually talk about climate change because it really is about the jobs, you know.
• 29:54
  Kathleen Biggins: Let me just mention that when you say the IRA, it's the Inflation Reduction Act that is kind of named because it truly was the largest climate legislation that this country has ever enacted.
• 30:05
  Kathleen Biggins: So when we're talking about IRA, we're not talking about our savings account.
• 30:09
  Kathleen Biggins: When we're older, we are talking about this um landmark bill.
• 30:13
  Kathleen Biggins: So could we take a minute to drill down on heat?
• 30:15
  Kathleen Biggins: Because I feel like heat is uh underappreciated.
• 30:20
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, and the fact that the South is already as hot as it is and as projected to potentially have temperatures in the 130s by mid-century with a lot of humidity, um that means a whole different world because it's not just a one-off, it's it's a whole season or it's an extended season.
• 30:42
  Kathleen Biggins: And that means so much for agriculture, that means so much for tourism, that means so much for human productivity, that means so much for you know your strength of your transportation, on and on and on.
• 30:52
  Kathleen Biggins: Do you have that same impression that that people are just kind of bare down on heat saying, oh, it's hot, we just have to get through it?
• 30:59
  Kathleen Biggins: And they aren't translating it into the economic costs that it is bringing and are not yet factoring in how much hotter it's going to get.
• 31:10
  Kathleen Biggins: Would would you I'm lead that's I'm totally leading question there.
• 31:13
  Kathleen Biggins: I'm sorry.
• 31:14
  Kathleen Biggins: Could you agree?
• 31:15
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, I could so I'll tell you that this was the most oppressive summer by some measure in Tampa's history.
• 31:21
  Jeff Berardelli: We've had 90 days with heat index numbers above 100.
• 31:24
  Jeff Berardelli: The uh average in the 1950s and 60s was only uh 20 days.
• 31:29
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, excuse me, we've had we've had 80 days, and the average in the 1950s and 60s was 20, and the long-term average is 40.
• 31:36
  Jeff Berardelli: So you could see that there's been a huge escalation.
• 31:39
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, I know from living here it's it's getting oppressive.
• 31:42
  Jeff Berardelli: You don't want to go outside during the summer.
• 31:44
  Jeff Berardelli: Um so, but it's not yet to the point where people are like, I just I'm gonna leave.
• 31:49
  Jeff Berardelli: I can't handle this.
• 31:50
  Jeff Berardelli: But I do think there are some people who do.
• 31:52
  Jeff Berardelli: They'd want they dream of living in like the the mountains of you know the in the in the Carolinas, or and some people do leave.
• 31:58
  Jeff Berardelli: I think it's people just hope that it happens slowly enough so that they can live out their life where they are.
• 32:03
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh it they I think they view it as a gradual process, but uh but I think people do realize legitimately that summers are getting unbearable here in Florida and they're getting worse.
• 32:16
  Jeff Berardelli: I do think that they know.
• 32:18
  Chris Gloninger: And I I think when you when you look at the impact of heat on the human body, that's really when you start dealing with health issues as well.
• 32:29
  Chris Gloninger: And when that can be a threat multiplier if you have cardiovascular or if you have respiratory-related issues that are pre-existing.
• 32:37
  Chris Gloninger: Uh I worry that when the media covers heat, oftentimes, um, and I will trash my former industry because uh my stations that I worked at were guilty of it.
• 32:50
  Chris Gloninger: So many shots of people playing in sprinklers or out in the pool, and those are the visuals of people just having a great time.
• 32:57
  Chris Gloninger: And I tried to find firefighters that were maybe uh fighting a fire in extreme heat, or people that were working in the utility industry that were dealing with the heat.
• 33:08
  Chris Gloninger: Um but I think unfortunately, it still is a problem for the lower class, the poor people in this country.
• 33:20
  Chris Gloninger: And that's where the climate gap is most evident.
• 33:23
  Chris Gloninger: When we have people that are spending a quarter or more of their salaries on heating and cooling costs, especially cooling costs, typically work these jobs that are excessive labor in these extreme conditions, go to a home that is not properly insulated, is not properly cooled, and then they're not able to cool off at night.
• 33:44
  Chris Gloninger: It's this vicious cycle that you can't claw your way out of it.
• 33:48
  Chris Gloninger: The people that are in the upper class, even the upper middle class, have the financial means to deal with it.
• 33:53
  Chris Gloninger: And that's the problem.
• 33:55
  Chris Gloninger: And I think once we really see that climate gap and how big it really is, heat's not going to get the uh the headlines that it really should.
• 34:06
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah.
• 34:07
  Jeff Berardelli: And but you know, you mentioned something, and there was an article recently.
• 34:09
  Jeff Berardelli: And Chris, I don't know if you were you probably read it.
• 34:12
  Jeff Berardelli: I don't know who wrote it.
• 34:13
  Jeff Berardelli: It was about how air conditioning costs are going up.
• 34:15
  Jeff Berardelli: Now that's something that could get people's attention, got my attention because I hadn't really thought about that very much.
• 34:20
  Jeff Berardelli: I just, you know, oftentimes think about how oppressive it is.
• 34:23
  Jeff Berardelli: Or, but that again is because I can pay for my air conditioning, you know, and it's an incremental cost increase.
• 34:30
  Jeff Berardelli: But I think Chris hit the nail on the head that there's such a disparity between the rich, you know, and and the poor.
• 34:37
  Kathleen Biggins: Yes, that is a real part of this whole story around climate change.
• 34:41
  Kathleen Biggins: And I will just do an add-on, though, is I think something that talked about is the fact that this add-on of extra air condition is also part of what is threatening our grid.
• 34:52
  Kathleen Biggins: So we hear a lot about AI, we hear a lot about data centers, but it's also the increased energy needs we have just to stay safe that will continue to get um higher and higher as we go into the century.
• 35:04
  Chris Gloninger: And I'll take that one step further, Kathleen.
• 35:07
  Chris Gloninger: It's also the source of a huge source of carbon emissions as well.
• 35:11
  Chris Gloninger: So it's that vicious cycle, it keeps going around and around.
• 35:14
  Kathleen Biggins: So um unfortunately, I am been told that I am past my time and we are moving now to the QA from our audience.
• 35:23
  Kathleen Biggins: So let me grab it up.
• 35:25
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, so here's a question from Fran Brady.
• 35:28
  Kathleen Biggins: Given the abundance of wildfires across the world, California, Canada, Portugal, and the Amazon region of Brazil right now, um, to name a few.
• 35:38
  Kathleen Biggins: How do you see these massive airborne particle generating effects affecting weather?
• 35:44
  Kathleen Biggins: Uh Jeff, you want to take that one?
• 35:47
  Jeff Berardelli: Um Yeah.
• 35:49
  Jeff Berardelli: Okay.
• 35:49
  Jeff Berardelli: So that is a tough one.
• 35:55
  Jeff Berardelli: It it would be more of an effect on climate than weather, because it wouldn't be an effect on like tomorrow's weather necessarily.
• 36:02
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh it would be obviously subject.
• 36:03
  Jeff Berardelli: It's health effects, right?
• 36:04
  Jeff Berardelli: Because you end up with you end up with pollution in cities.
• 36:08
  Jeff Berardelli: So that's an effect on weather, but I think the question is probably more like how is it going to affect the weather long term or the climate long term?
• 36:16
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, well, the more um emissions that we produce, uh theoretically, and in you know, in terms of aerosols, so pollution.
• 36:24
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, theoretically, the cooler it would make the climate, I don't know if we'll ever get to the point where we're producing so many fires that it's actually though cooling the climate.
• 36:33
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, so you know, maybe Chris, you have a better answer for this because um I don't know.
• 36:39
  Jeff Berardelli: I'm more worried about the the the debilitating health effects that are caused by the pollution from wildfires.
• 36:49
  Chris Gloninger: No, I I I agree.
• 36:50
  Chris Gloninger: I mean, there is some evidence from my time in Iowa when we had fires out in California and western um Canada, we missed the forecasted high temperature by a fairly wide margin, and that was because of the aerosols, right?
• 37:04
  Chris Gloninger: So we have smoke up there, as Jeff was mentioning, reflecting the sun's energy back out of space, and that has uh a cooling effect.
• 37:11
  Chris Gloninger: However, at night, it should keep things a little bit warmer because the heat won't really be able to escape back out into space.
• 37:17
  Chris Gloninger: So as Jeff said, it that's a really difficult topic.
• 37:21
  Chris Gloninger: But I also wouldn't really just worry about it being a threat multiplier in the health space because we had some of our biggest fires during COVID when ERs were over on, and then they had a whole bunch of people with asthma, emphysema, COPD going in for poor air quality issues.
• 37:36
  Chris Gloninger: So right.
• 37:38
  Jeff Berardelli: And the insurance, you know, um not so much smoke, obviously, but the the insurance problems that we're seeing in many places because wildfires are like hurricanes, you know, uh they're they affect a certain area, and all of a sudden insurance companies pull out of the state.
• 37:51
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh that's one of the first shoes to drop, you know.
• 37:55
  Kathleen Biggins: Right.
• 37:56
  Kathleen Biggins: Insurance is often called the canary in the coal mine, the first time you really see it um in costs that you can tie together.
• 38:04
  Kathleen Biggins: So, yes, definitely.
• 38:05
  Kathleen Biggins: So we have uh an anonymous question.
• 38:08
  Kathleen Biggins: Do you find that your younger audiences are more willing to accept the changes caused by humans?
• 38:15
  Jeff Berardelli: I I guess I can talk about that.
• 38:17
  Jeff Berardelli: I I think so, because the only people that complain are usually the older folks and oftentimes people that may look a little bit like me, uh, and maybe even slightly older than me.
• 38:28
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, just about all the people who complain are of a similar age category and a similar complexion, if you will.
• 38:36
  Jeff Berardelli: Oh, okay.
• 38:37
  Jeff Berardelli: I noticed, yeah.
• 38:38
  Jeff Berardelli: Um Chris, would you would you agree with me?
• 38:42
  Chris Gloninger: Yes, spot on.
• 38:43
  Chris Gloninger: I mean, even in Iowa, even in some of the more conservative towns, there was this inspiring young lady um um who was from a a really red part of Iowa.
• 38:55
  Chris Gloninger: And she was one of the most vocal people I've ever met on climate change and did amazing work.
• 39:00
  Chris Gloninger: So I I think, yes, and and even not just um, quote, liberal younger people, but even the conservatives are that are younger are interested in this and in curbing CO2 emissions.
• 39:14
  Chris Gloninger: Absolutely.
• 39:15
  Kathleen Biggins: Yeah, I think there's some research that recently came out that said 40% of the younger generation are very concerned about climate change.
• 39:21
  Kathleen Biggins: And that that that's important.
• 39:23
  Kathleen Biggins: And um it does show that younger conservatives are much more aware of and want leaders to act on it than the older cohort.
• 39:34
  Kathleen Biggins: So we do have some numbers to support that.
• 39:36
  Kathleen Biggins: Um next question is I have tremendous respect for climate science and meteorologists.
• 39:42
  Kathleen Biggins: Thus, I was surprised this morning that even the meteorologists were taken by surprise at the extent of the deluge in Carolina Beach, south of Wilmington, North Carolina.
• 39:51
  Kathleen Biggins: Is this part of a new reality?
• 39:53
  Kathleen Biggins: Even professionals can be taken by surprise by the extremity of these storms now and going forward.
• 39:59
  Kathleen Biggins: How can climate science improve the predictions in a changing world?
• 40:04
  Jeff Berardelli: I think you have to expect the unexpected now, whereas you didn't have to years ago.
• 40:08
  Jeff Berardelli: Do you know when I was in college, and this was back in the 90s, um, we were told don't predict records.
• 40:13
  Jeff Berardelli: Never predict a record high.
• 40:15
  Jeff Berardelli: Never predict a record this.
• 40:17
  Jeff Berardelli: Why?
• 40:17
  Jeff Berardelli: Because they rarely ever happened.
• 40:19
  Jeff Berardelli: And so, you know, more often than not, you would end up losing in your forecast if you predicted a record.
• 40:25
  Jeff Berardelli: I would say the new rule is expect a record.
• 40:28
  Jeff Berardelli: You know, expect it to be worse than you expected it to be.
• 40:31
  Jeff Berardelli: That's, I think, but that is a slow generational change, even for meteorologists.
• 40:36
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, yes, we're seeing so more, so many more of these floods, and I think it's apparent to anyone watching this, anybody even watching the news.
• 40:44
  Jeff Berardelli: We're seeing a lot, we've seen so many of these this year so far.
• 40:47
  Jeff Berardelli: I had two or three here in the Bay Area alone.
• 40:50
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, so um I think the computer models probably underestimated this to a degree.
• 40:55
  Jeff Berardelli: I wasn't paying very close attention to this because it was in the Carolinas, and that's not my forecast area.
• 41:01
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, but I do think that these systems are systematically underestimated nowadays.
• 41:12
  Kathleen Biggins: Okay, wonderful.
• 41:13
  Kathleen Biggins: Thank you.
• 41:14
  Chris Gloninger: I I do think some of the forecast models aren't doing great.
• 41:17
  Chris Gloninger: I mean, they are, and and climate projections are in a sense part of our operational forecast models, what we look at, uh, which kind of run all of those mathematical formulas to help us determine what the next few days will look like.
• 41:32
  Chris Gloninger: There are big improvements.
• 41:33
  Chris Gloninger: It's not looking just at climatological, you know, past data.
• 41:37
  Chris Gloninger: It's also factoring into the changes that we're seeing.
• 41:40
  Chris Gloninger: But we are noticing, I mean, Harvey, I think, is an even better example of a storm that we didn't think was going to be that strong, but heck, ended up being a category four storm and then dumped 50-some inches of rain.
• 41:50
  Chris Gloninger: I don't think, Jeff, correct me if I'm wrong.
• 41:52
  Chris Gloninger: I don't think there was a model that sniffed out 54 inches of rain in anyone's eye.
• 41:56
  Chris Gloninger: Maybe close, but not to that magnitude.
• 41:59
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, I don't think so.
• 41:59
  Jeff Berardelli: You're right.
• 42:00
  Jeff Berardelli: I don't think there was any model that showed that, but I can tell you days ahead, we were looking at the model saying, oh my goodness, look at how much rain is going to fall.
• 42:07
  Jeff Berardelli: They may have been predicting three feet, and yet someone ended up with 60 inches.
• 42:11
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh Michael Rayner, um, who's a climate scientist who studies this kind of stuff, um, he estimates that at least 20% or around 20% more rain fell in Hurricane Harvey due to climate change.
• 42:23
  Jeff Berardelli: But when he did the calculations on how many, how much extra damage was produced and how many extra homes were inundated because of that extra 20-ish percent of extra rain, it turned out it ended up being almost half the cost of Hurricane Harvey.
• 42:40
  Jeff Berardelli: Because think about it, you get this much rain and this many flood homes flood, but then you get past a certain threshold, kind of like Hurricane Sandy when it came into New York City.
• 42:49
  Jeff Berardelli: You had 10 feet of storm surge.
• 42:51
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't go over the battery.
• 42:53
  Jeff Berardelli: So you don't get any flooding in lower Manhattan.
• 42:56
  Jeff Berardelli: You get 11 feet, and now all of Lower Manhattan is flooded because the water was able to breach the walls.
• 43:02
  Jeff Berardelli: And so there is a threshold for our our infrastructure is built for in many places.
• 43:07
  Jeff Berardelli: Um and climate change is able to push you past the threshold where you go from having this much damage to having that much damage.
• 43:14
  Jeff Berardelli: That makes sense.
• 43:16
  Kathleen Biggins: It makes a lot of sense.
• 43:17
  Kathleen Biggins: And let me follow up on that with a question from um an anonymous participant about maximum rainfall rates are increasing during 100-year events as well as hurricanes.
• 43:30
  Kathleen Biggins: Can we expect more of what are called a hundred-year floods?
• 43:33
  Kathleen Biggins: But can we also explain what one in a hundred year and one in a thousand year and one in five hundred year floods means or storm means?
• 43:42
  Kathleen Biggins: Because it's bandied about.
• 43:43
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, and it doesn't really mean that it's only going to happen one in a thousand years.
• 43:48
  Kathleen Biggins: So can you can you answer the question and explain exactly what it knows?
• 43:53
  Chris Gloninger: Yeah.
• 43:53
  Chris Gloninger: So the hundred year flood event, the the chance on any given day of that flood happening is 0.01%.
• 44:02
  Chris Gloninger: So then the thousand-year flood is even more infrequent than that.
• 44:08
  Chris Gloninger: But you're looking at kind of a static climate when you're making these assessments and when you set up the hundred and a thousand year flood events, and that just isn't the case anymore.
• 44:20
  Chris Gloninger: I mean, infrastructure was built on the idea that our climate was stable, right?
• 44:23
  Chris Gloninger: This is how much rain that this stormwater system should be able to take.
• 44:27
  Chris Gloninger: Not the case anymore.
• 44:28
  Chris Gloninger: So it's that kind of moving target that we're looking at.
• 44:32
  Chris Gloninger: So it is pretty common now that we're seeing areas, and Jeff, I think you mentioned this uh a couple days ago when we're on a call.
• 44:40
  Chris Gloninger: Um the place in Connecticut and the place in Long Island that had two uh thousand-year or two like geographically so close together.
• 44:51
  Chris Gloninger: And I think that really kind of paints the picture of just the frequency is increasing, and it isn't the best way to really communicate that risk anymore.
• 44:59
  Jeff Berardelli: And it's happening more often in the northeast than it's happening anywhere else.
• 45:03
  Jeff Berardelli: We're seeing, and and that's consistent with how the statistics have changed in the Northeast over the past 50 years.
• 45:10
  Jeff Berardelli: If you look at where the most extreme rain events are becoming more extreme, well, we're seeing uh something like a 50 or 60 percent increase in the most extreme rain events in the northeast and Great Lakes and less everywhere else.
• 45:22
  Jeff Berardelli: And sure enough, just looking at where we've seen most of the increase in extreme rain events this year, a lot of them are happening in the northeast Vermont, Connecticut, New York, that area.
• 45:33
  Jeff Berardelli: I had two here.
• 45:36
  Kathleen Biggins: It sure feels that way.
• 45:37
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, we're up in Princeton and it definitely feels that way.
• 45:40
  Kathleen Biggins: So there's a really good question from Karen here, which is about um needing an explanation about what is happening to the jet stream.
• 45:48
  Kathleen Biggins: And I think I might add on to that question and say, what is also happening to our water currents?
• 45:54
  Kathleen Biggins: Because they're both changing and they have real implications um for us if they change within well when they change.
• 46:04
  Kathleen Biggins: Let me just put it that way.
• 46:05
  Kathleen Biggins: They will have real implications for us.
• 46:06
  Kathleen Biggins: So um, could we first talk about the jet stream and then also talk about um some of the water currents that are also showing change?
• 46:14
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, I can start with a jet stream and just say it is so complicated because even meteorologists have different ideas of what a jet stream is, and I mean Chris, I'm sure, can understand where I'm coming from here.
• 46:26
  Jeff Berardelli: I oftentimes, when I look at the jet stream, I'm kind of looking at something called 500 millibars, which is like 20,000 feet in the atmosphere.
• 46:32
  Jeff Berardelli: But the real jet stream is even higher up than that.
• 46:34
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, but the problem is the jet stream exists at different heights, different times a year, and at different latitudes.
• 46:43
  Jeff Berardelli: And so we're not all even talking about the same thing here.
• 46:46
  Jeff Berardelli: It's very possible that at one altitude the jet stream ends up moving poleward, closer to the north pole because it's warming up there and the contrast is pushed closer.
• 46:58
  Jeff Berardelli: Whereas at another latitude, the jet stream ends up moving, maybe not moving north at all.
• 47:03
  Jeff Berardelli: It may just undulate more.
• 47:05
  Jeff Berardelli: So this is really, really, really complicated stuff.
• 47:08
  Jeff Berardelli: We know that things are changing.
• 47:10
  Jeff Berardelli: That probably the thing I would say most makes sense to me is that the jet stream is becoming more blocky because you get bigger pressure systems like high pressure, bigger heat waves.
• 47:22
  Jeff Berardelli: Well, you're gonna slow the whole system down.
• 47:24
  Jeff Berardelli: So that makes a lot of sense.
• 47:26
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, so from the standpoint of a jet stream, I think it makes sense, and we've seen some evidence of it, that we get more blocky stuck patterns.
• 47:35
  Jeff Berardelli: Thus, we end up with more crazy floods like in North Carolina or in Poland and Austria, and heat waves that last longer because things are just not moving.
• 47:42
  Jeff Berardelli: Um but Chris, if you want to jump in, we can we can we can get back to, I know you want to talk about the AMOC, which is a completely different topic.
• 47:50
  Jeff Berardelli: So, Chris, why don't you jump in on the jet stream?
• 47:53
  Chris Gloninger: Yeah, I mean, and if you want to read more on this, Dr.
• 47:56
  Chris Gloninger: Jennifer France is Woodwell Climate Research Center, one of the scientists that have done a lot of that.
• 48:01
  Chris Gloninger: But as Jeff mentioned, you know, when you have those wavier jet streams, if you take your garden nose and you could put a kink in it, what happens to the water coming out of it?
• 48:09
  Chris Gloninger: It slows down.
• 48:10
  Chris Gloninger: So that is some of the research that we're we're we're seeing.
• 48:14
  Chris Gloninger: Um, Jeff, do you want to start on the on Amok or do you want me to Yeah?
• 48:19
  Jeff Berardelli: I just end with the jet stream, which is it's complicated, but there's something big happening.
• 48:24
  Jeff Berardelli: But it's it's gonna take a lot of time to get to the bottom of it for certain because this is just talking about atmospheric dynamics and physics and everything work.
• 48:32
  Jeff Berardelli: It's very easy when you're just putting more moisture into the atmosphere and causing more rain, right?
• 48:36
  Jeff Berardelli: That's an easy one.
• 48:37
  Jeff Berardelli: We know that happens with more, but when you're talking about jet stream stuff, you're talking about a whole lot of things that have to come together.
• 48:43
  Kathleen Biggins: Can I ask one more thing about jet stream, though?
• 48:45
  Kathleen Biggins: I have heard some of the extreme cold that drops down to say Texas or lingers down has also been attributed to a weaker jet stream.
• 48:53
  Kathleen Biggins: So some of this unusual cold have does that have any credibility or is that kind of people talk about it all the time.
• 49:00
  Jeff Berardelli: Extreme cold is not becoming more common.
• 49:02
  Jeff Berardelli: And those particular cold outbreaks are probably warmer than they were 100 years ago.
• 49:06
  Jeff Berardelli: But in certain instances, when you get blocking in the Arctic during certain times of the winter, yes, because of the excess blocking, you displace the jet stream to another area, which could be the United States or maybe in Europe, and you might, in fact, in certain situations, cause cold air outbreaks.
• 49:26
  Jeff Berardelli: But those cold air outbreaks are not as cold as they were 100 years ago, given the you know apples to apples comparison.
• 49:33
  Jeff Berardelli: Thank you.
• 49:34
  Kathleen Biggins: So, and then do you want to explain what Amulk is?
• 49:37
  Kathleen Biggins: Because I'm not sure that our audience would be familiar with it.
• 49:39
  Kathleen Biggins: I I think I sent you a curveball because that's not really your meteorological expertise.
• 49:44
  Kathleen Biggins: But we both are very familiar with it, so we can so it's it we're talking about the circulation through the Atlantic Ocean that goes up around Europe and then sinks back down.
• 49:54
  Kathleen Biggins: It's a conveyor belt for warm water to be brought to the north, and then it sinks down and the cold water comes down.
• 50:01
  Kathleen Biggins: It's been something that's been very important to regulating our temperatures for a very long time, and it seems to be slowing down, and there's some concern that it may slow down to a point where there would be some really negative repercussions.
• 50:13
  Kathleen Biggins: It seemed to be something that was in the far, far off future that seems scary, but that we have a lot of time to deal with.
• 50:20
  Kathleen Biggins: New research is showing that perhaps we don't have as much time to prepare for something like that.
• 50:25
  Kathleen Biggins: What are you guys hearing about it?
• 50:28
  Kathleen Biggins: And what are the weather implications if indeed this circulation continues to slow down?
• 50:36
  Chris Gloninger: You want to take it, Chris, or you want me to do it?
• 50:37
  Chris Gloninger: Yeah, yeah, I can, yeah.
• 50:39
  Chris Gloninger: So, I mean, you're looking at a couple of things driving it, right?
• 50:41
  Chris Gloninger: So typically what what moves currents are temperature differential, wind.
• 50:48
  Chris Gloninger: Um, but now we're starting to see this intrusion, one of the reasons why, of snow melt uh and ice melt from the land glaciers and the land ice, it's coming down.
• 50:59
  Chris Gloninger: And that is affecting, and essentially, when you have a thin layer of fresh water on top of the salt water, it's actually heating up a lot faster than the salt water.
• 51:09
  Chris Gloninger: So that is one of the one of the key reasons too that we're starting to see the slowdown.
• 51:14
  Chris Gloninger: And I think what people get caught up in the in the idea that, you know, well, how does the ocean current uh affect our day-to-day life?
• 51:22
  Chris Gloninger: Well, maybe not so much on the eastern seaboard, but places like Ireland and the UK.
• 51:28
  Chris Gloninger: This is why those climates are survivable, because largely because of the AMO current.
• 51:36
  Chris Gloninger: Um, and if it were to even slow, we're talking about impacts agriculture that could drop yields in half in that part of the world, which would then leave a lot of climate refugees in that case.
• 51:47
  Chris Gloninger: So um, you know, it's more than just the temperatures kind of evening out, which drops or the or slows the current, but we're also seeing that that intrusion of fresh water into the oceans in the northern latitudes, which is concerning because that heats up that much quicker.
• 52:05
  Chris Gloninger: Jeff, do you want to add anything else to?
• 52:07
  Jeff Berardelli: Sure, you know, uh, and what you had mentioned, Kathleen, I think it's worth kind of reiterating, used to be 10 years ago, scientific studies basically said the AMOC's not going to collapse, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is not gonna collapse.
• 52:23
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh and if it does, it's not gonna collapse until after 2100.
• 52:26
  Jeff Berardelli: But there have been a series of papers in just the past few years, three, four years, which say, uh oh, now we think it may collapse.
• 52:35
  Jeff Berardelli: Oh, and by the way, it may happen sometime around 2050 or 2060, or maybe even before that.
• 52:41
  Jeff Berardelli: But the collapse doesn't happen overnight.
• 52:44
  Jeff Berardelli: It happens over the course of several decades.
• 52:48
  Jeff Berardelli: But there's a switch, it's like a light switch.
• 52:53
  Jeff Berardelli: It's an off or on.
• 52:54
  Jeff Berardelli: It does, it'll slow, but at some point, it's like turning off a switch.
• 52:59
  Jeff Berardelli: And to turn that switch back on is thousands of years.
• 53:02
  Jeff Berardelli: So when we get to a point where we've tripped it, and who the who knows, we may have already tipped it, but if we haven't, it could be coming in the next couple of decades, which which is what some of these studies say.
• 53:15
  Jeff Berardelli: If that would happen, Chris talked about it, which is we would see all that warm water from the Gulf Stream wouldn't would no longer get to Ireland or or Britain, so northern Europe would go very cold, and that would change agriculture patterns and be devastating because it would happen somewhat quickly.
• 53:31
  Jeff Berardelli: Also, uh sea levels along the eastern seaboard would probably go up two, maybe three feet more than they otherwise would have.
• 53:39
  Jeff Berardelli: Again, not in my lifetime, probably not in my daughter's lifetime, but it's possible, but in her kids' lifetime, probably.
• 53:48
  Jeff Berardelli: Uh so and we don't honestly know.
• 53:51
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, um the northward heat transport um globally, the AMOC contributes to something like 25% of that.
• 54:01
  Jeff Berardelli: So if you and a lot of that is due to the Gulf Stream, if you stop that transport of warmth from the equator to the poles, there's gonna be big changes.
• 54:13
  Jeff Berardelli: You're gonna change where the intertropical conversion zone is, which oftentimes you know is where is people uh people in all in in South America and in Africa rely on that water for crops.
• 54:24
  Jeff Berardelli: You might change hurricane seasons because you've moved the ITCZ.
• 54:28
  Jeff Berardelli: Um the point is, is we've never had something that systemic and catastrophic fail.
• 54:33
  Jeff Berardelli: So we don't really know exactly what how bad it could potentially be if it were to happen.
• 54:38
  Jeff Berardelli: But the bottom line is science says that we could be just decades away from flipping that that switch.
• 54:45
  Jeff Berardelli: Again, it wouldn't happen overnight, but once you flip the switch, you're you're heading in that direction, and that's and that's it.
• 54:54
  unknown: Okay.
• 54:54
  Kathleen Biggins: I thank you for that explanation.
• 54:56
  Kathleen Biggins: That is something that keeps me up at night.
• 54:58
  Kathleen Biggins: So um I'm not sure that you made it better, but uh it's important for us to really understand just what you said is we are we are risking things that we don't even understand how bad they could become.
• 55:10
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, and and that is something that is truly sobering.
• 55:14
  Kathleen Biggins: So there are several more questions.
• 55:17
  Kathleen Biggins: Unfortunately, we are out of time, and I am so sorry about that because I think this conversation is so important, and I know that our audience has really been um appreciative of having your expertise and and your perspective.
• 55:31
  Kathleen Biggins: There is one question though that I just would love to ask.
• 55:33
  Kathleen Biggins: We're just gonna slip it in as a as a lanyap, as we say in New Orleans, which is where do you see will be the safest places to live in the face of climate change?
• 55:45
  Chris Gloninger: Great lakes, probably.
• 55:46
  Chris Gloninger: Honestly, Duluth has seen an incredible population boom.
• 55:51
  Chris Gloninger: And that's largely because it's a climate haven where there's fresh water, uh, that won't be an issue, relatively temperate climate.
• 55:59
  Chris Gloninger: That's one of the locations where there's actually been a large increase in people.
• 56:06
  Chris Gloninger: And the York Times actually did a great profile on that recently.
• 56:10
  Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, I would say, I would say Chris is right.
• 56:13
  Jeff Berardelli: That makes sense to me.
• 56:14
  Jeff Berardelli: Um, places that aren't already too dry, because usually the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, right?
• 56:20
  Jeff Berardelli: So the places that are dry will get drier.
• 56:21
  Jeff Berardelli: The places that are getting fires, well, they're gonna be in big trouble.
• 56:25
  Jeff Berardelli: Places that are good at hurricanes, probably big trouble.
• 56:27
  Jeff Berardelli: So just think about where those things aren't.
• 56:29
  Jeff Berardelli: But the northeast, the northeast probably honestly, those floods are getting really bad in many parts of the northeast.
• 56:35
  Jeff Berardelli: So where is where is the where is the place that's nobody escapes it?
• 56:40
  Jeff Berardelli: But I think Chris is probably right.
• 56:42
  Jeff Berardelli: That was my first thought, you know, or parts of Canada.
• 56:46
  Jeff Berardelli: I mean, we're talking about this part of the world.
• 56:50
  Kathleen Biggins: Okay.
• 56:51
  Kathleen Biggins: Well, on that happy note, before I close off, I just cannot thank our two guests enough.
• 56:57
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, we so appreciated having you with us.
• 57:01
  Kathleen Biggins: I could keep on talking for another two or three hours, um, but that would not be fair to either of you.
• 57:08
  Kathleen Biggins: Um, but I hope we can stay in touch and continue to learn from each other as we work to bring this important messaging forward in a way that more people can hear.
• 57:17
  Kathleen Biggins: So thank you.
• 57:19
  Jeff Berardelli: You're welcome and thank you for having us.
• 57:23
  Kathleen Biggins: Great.
• 57:23
  Kathleen Biggins: And thanks to our audience, and we'll see you next time.
• 57:26
  Kathleen Biggins: Take care.