​It was well into what we now call hurricane season in 1879 when the Atlantic Hotel on the Beaufort waterfront began filling with hundreds of guests ahead of the North Carolina Press Association’s annual meeting taking place there in late August.

Visitors from across the state, including the then-governor and his wife, made the lengthy trek to the hotel, most arriving around Aug. 15, of that year, about the same time as rumors began to circulate that a hurricane was causing damage in the Caribbean.

“But nobody in Beaufort was too bothered by that. In fact, the hotel manager was told about it, and he said, ‘we haven’t had a bad storm here in over 20 years. Everyone’s going to be fine,’” Assistant State Climatologist Corey Davis explained when he began his talk on “Lessons Learned from Recent Statewide Storms” at the Down East Resilience Network’s fall gathering.

Davis is with the State Climate Office of North Carolina based at N.C. State University in Raleigh, and was one of the speakers at the get-together held Sept. 23-24 in the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

A project of the museum, the network meets there a few times a year to share and discuss with scientists, decision-makers and residents the latest research on the threats to Carteret County’s coastal communities such as nuisance flooding and hurricanes, and opportunities to address the aftermath.

Davis continued, fast-forward to a few days later, and warning signs began to appear that a storm was coming. “It’s the fishermen, the locals, that are the first ones to take notice.”

Then a Coast Guardsman stationed at Fort Macon on Bogue Banks began to receive telegraph transmissions from Florida and Georgia about the storm making its way up the coast.

The Coast Guardsman rushes to Beaufort to tell the hotel manager that a hurricane is on its way, Davis narrated, “and this hotel manager just scoffs. He said, ‘Nobody from the U.S. government is going to tell me how to run my hotel. Now you go back and do your job. Everybody here is going to be fine for the night. Well, as you can guess from the foreshadowing, they were not fine,” Davis said. “By 3 a.m. the rain had picked up. The wind was blowing even harder. The floodwaters along the ocean from the storm surge had risen to waist high by that point.”

A local then sounded the alarm to alert everyone that they needed to seek safety. The bottom floors of the hotel were already flooding, but not many people took notice.

“Now, I wish I could tell you that this story had a happy ending, but it doesn’t. This is a tragedy in our state. This is the story of the great Beaufort hurricane of 1879. It was a Category 3 storm at landfall right here in Carteret County. And in total, 46 people in North Carolina and Virginia lost their lives during the storm,” Davis said.

The hotel was rebuilt the next year on the Morehead City waterfront, only to burn to the ground in 1933.

He opened his talk with ​that history to give “a perspective of how these storms were perceived 100 and some years ago. Largely, that’s that hurricanes were primarily coastal events.”

Prompting him to ask what has changed when it comes to learning about hurricane behavior and forecasting, as well as why tropical storms and their hazards getting worse, and putting more folks at risk.

One change, for the good, is that forecasting has improved since the early 1970s. “What we saw back in the late ’70s, early ’80s is that the average track error at 72 hours was something like 400 nautical miles. That’s basically the distance between right here on Harkers Island and Knoxville, Tennessee,” Davis said.

Track error is the difference between where a hurricane is expected to go and the path it actually travels.

As science, modeling and forecasting have improved in the decades since, track error has decreased. “Over the last five to 10 years, that 72-hour error is under 100 nautical miles,” he said.

Another area of improvement, which he thinks should continue to improve, is communicating to the public the storm forecast and associated hazards.

Past messaging has focused on winds being the primary hazard, especially for coastal areas, but in recent years forecasters have emphasized rain amounts, flooding and storm surge, as well as hazards people in inland areas should expect.

One of the changes “that we don’t have a whole lot of control over” is background climate, which includes increasing global ocean heat content, or the total amount of heat the ocean has absorbed and stored.

“We know by now that the oceans have really absorbed the brunt of the warming that’s happening, especially over the last 50 to 60 years,” he said, and there’s been a steady increase since the late 1960s or the early 1970s.

This increase has had a few different impacts on tropical storm and hurricane events.

“No. 1, when you’re seeing that much warm water present, it means more seasons will be favorable for tropical activity. Even though there can be some other environmental oceanic factors that you have to worry about, if the ocean is warm enough, you can pretty much always get storms to form,” Davis said.

Another big impact is rapid intensification, like when a storm goes from a Category 1 to a Category 4 in 18 hours, as did Hurricane Erin earlier this summer.

“Obviously, that does add to the punch that those storms bring when they get to land,” Davis said.

As for atmospheric factors, a warmer atmosphere is similar to a bigger sponge and is “able to soak up more moisture, and it tends to wring out that moisture all at once, and it is able to do that even farther inland as well. So storms are getting wetter overall,” Davis said.

Hurricane Florence in September 2018 dumped “36 inches of rain in parts of southeastern North Carolina, just unheard-of amounts.”

Researchers looking at hurricane trends have found that, especially since the early 1970s, the storms are slowing down and even stalling when reaching land, and that’s primarily for the coastal Carolinas.

“That means we see storms like Florence. They get to our coast and just slow to a crawl; they sit over us for days and drop even more rainfall than we’ve ever seen,” he said.

Another consequence of these changes is that more people are in harm’s way from these storms. Davis cited a study from a few years ago that found for every house in North Carolina that was removed due to floodplain buyouts, another 10 had been built in those floodplain areas.

Another study determined that from 1996 to 2020, 43% of the flooded buildings in the state were outside of the Federal Emergency Management Agency-designated floodplains, and of all the buildings that have flooded in the state during this 25-year window, 23% flooded multiple times.

Storms look different now than they did in 2010, Davis continued, referencing a map showing the major storms most people consider the worst they experienced.

From the mountains, east, the storms were: Frances in 1916, Ivan in 1940, Hugo in 1989, Hazel in 1954, Fran in 1996, Floyd in 1999 and Isabel in 2003.

Davis then moved to a new map his office created showing the state’s worst tropical events as of September, which looks drastically different from the 2010 map.

“Carteret County is a really good example,” Davis said. “You’ve got one of those classic coastal monster storms. Hazel in 1954, a big event, storm surge in Morehead City and other parts of the coastline.”

But for the North Core Banks and Ocracoke Island, 2019’s Dorian caused soundside storm surge like those areas had never seen before. “Most of the rest of Carteret County and most of southeastern North Carolina would now show Florence as the worst.”

Fifty other counties have seen their worst storm come during the last 10 years.

Looking at the scale of some of these events, Florence can now be considered the worst storm from Cape Lookout to the suburbs of Charlotte. “That is a massive footprint that we just didn’t see historically for those sorts of storms,” Davis said.

Davis said there are things to be learned from these storms.  

“The first is what I’ll call action at a distance,” which essentially means that an area can experience big impacts even if the eye of the storm remains far away.

“I know this area saw that with Erin earlier in the summer, 200 to 300 miles offshore, but you still saw the rip currents and the overwash as if it was literally right in your backyard,” Davis said.

Another takeaway, he continued, is that you can’t just look at the strength of the winds or the category to understand what a storm will do.

Tropical Storm Chantal in early July was a weak tropical depression when it moved over central North Carolina, but the 8 to 10 inches of rain over a 12-hour period was far beyond what those areas had seen before.

Davis said he’s “firmly in the camp” of if we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it, and one of the big tragedies in eastern North Carolina was after Hurricane Floyd came through in 1999. Residents were told that it was a thousand-year event, leading people to believe a storm of that magnitude wouldn’t happen again in their lifetime, their children’s lifetime, or their children’s children’s lifetime, so they rebuilt the same as before.

“It wasn’t until we got the next storm with Matthew and the next storm with Florence, that they realized it’s probably not a great idea to have a house here, because this is not a once-in-a-lifetime event,” he said, adding that has to be emphasized to people. “If it happens once, it’ll happen again.”

There was a time when the distinctive “kiki-do” call of eastern black rails were a common sound rising up from North Carolina marshes.

Masters of secrecy, these little birds are rarely, if ever, seen.

They prefer to skirt through the marsh using tunnels dug by rabbits and other small mammals rather than take to the sky. Their nests are typically well concealed close to the ground in the highest part of brackish, saltwater and inland freshwater marshes.

But the habitat that eastern black rails so skillfully use to maintain their privacy is under growing threat from rising ocean waters, more powerful storms, and development and, if their numbers continue to decline, projections are they’ll disappear altogether within 35 years.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission aims to help these birds, putting forth a management plan to improve the black rails’ habitat by permanently protecting coastal marshes and assisting private landowners with potential habitat creation.

That’s going to take hundreds of acres of additional inland, shallow marsh and high-elevation coastal marsh.

“We think there’s probably less than 40 breeding pairs in North Carolina right now,” said Kacy Cook, a coastal waterbird biologist with the Wildlife Resources Commission.

The commission is accepting public comment on the Black Rail Management Plan through July 11.

The eastern black rail was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2020. The commission lists it as a species of greatest conservation need.

Long gone are the days when eastern black rails were documented in freshwater marshes in the North Carolina mountains and Piedmont. No one has heard their “kiki-do” in the interior part of the state since 2005, Cook said.

Once abundant black rail habitat along the North Carolina has been crowded out by houses, roads and farmed land.

The last remaining pockets of coastal areas where the birds are heard in some places in the Outer Banks (exact locations are kept under wraps to prevent human disturbance) and Cedar Island, an unincorporated area of Carteret County. Even there, surveys reveal a dramatic population decline.

Surveys are conducted throughout the black rails’ breeding cycle by using something called a targeted call-response where biologists play a recording of the “kiki-do” sound and wait for a response from black rails in the survey area.

“You used to be able to hear 70 black rail calling from the causeway,” at Cedar Island, Cook said.

Now, fewer than 10 respond at any given time, she said.

And while that’s not good for the eastern black rail, it’s also indicative of a wider coastal problem.

“Black rails are our signal that our coastal marshes and freshwater wetlands are in trouble, and that makes a difference for a lot of species, and our own wellbeing,” Cook said.

Eastern black rails rely on very shallow water levels in marshes. They have legs that are typically just over one inch long. Their fledglings, roughly the size of cotton balls, are out of the nest within 24 hours of hatching, but they’re not able to fly until about 40 days later.

This is why coastal storm flooding, exacerbated by sea level rise, is a particular threat, because flood waters can wash away the nests, eggs and chicks. One big storm could wipe out the remaining population in North Carolina.

“Those are happening at a rate that is too high for their population to grow,” Cook said.

Lack of fire, which is crucial to maintaining that type of habitat, and agricultural practices that include cutting field borders where black rails like to settle among wet, tall, grassy habitat, are further degrading the birds’ habitat.

“I’m only finding black rails where we have high herbaceous plant diversity. They only use habitats that are very dense herbaceous cover, grasses and flowers with few shrubs and no trees,” Cook said.

The commission’s management plan for black rails includes the creation and restoration of 600 acres of freshwater marsh and 600 acres of additional high-elevation coastal march by 2056.

“What we do for black rails will benefit all of the marsh birds that we have now, including the egrets and the herons and the wood storks. So, working on restoring black rail habitat is going to benefit all of our coastal birds in some way and our seafood. Seventy-five percent of our seafood comes from coastal marshes,” Cook said.

Heat researchers at Duke University will spend the next two years developing an interactive, web-based tool to help policymakers plan for extreme heat, especially in rural and coastal communities.

The U.S. Department of Commerce and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced earlier this month that $500,000 was awarded to the university’s Heat Policy Innovation Hub on the campus in Durham.

“Over the last 30 years, heat exposure has killed more people in the United States than any other weather-related phenomenon. The combined economic impacts of labor loss, hospital visits, and reduced agricultural yield — along with the health impacts of exposure — make heat among the most significant consequences of climate change for humanity,” according to the hub.

Funded through the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act signed in 2022, the hub is partnering on the project with the National Integrated Heat Health Information System, or NIHHIS. Under NOAA’s climate office, the system is a collaboration of 25 federal entities working to reduce heat impacts across the country.

“The economies of rural communities often rely on agriculture and other outdoor industries, while coastal communities exposed to high humidity tend to rely on hospitality, tourism and recreation,” hub Director Ashley Ward said in a release. “Extreme heat poses health and economic hazards in both types of communities, but the risks are different and require targeted solutions.”

Ward said in an interview that while there’s been a lot of research on how heat affects human health, there has been much less work on how it affects the economy.

“We have been so focused, and for good reason, on the health impacts of heat,” but heat’s impact on the economy is “going to have much bigger consequences than we’ve appreciated so far,” she said.

The World Economic Forum for the first time released in December its assessment of what climate change will mean for businesses globally. The report, Business on the Edge, predicts a 70% global loss in fixed assets from heat over the next decade.

That’s hundreds of billions of dollars, Ward said.

“They determined that most of that loss will occur in the communication sector and the utilities, and it will happen because of labor wage loss, labor productivity loss, and damage to hard infrastructure,” she said. “Personally, I think that we have not even begun to understand the catastrophic economic impact that heat will bring in the next 10 to 20 years.”

Ward explained the innovation hub is “very early” in the planning process and that researchers are thinking about what the web-based tool will look like.

The tool’s interactive map is expected to focus on localized heat impacts, offer guidance on developing heat policies, assess heat risks in rural and coastal communities, and facilitate private sector collaboration. The research team plans to work with policymakers to ensure the tool meets their needs.

“A good chunk of this work is going to be quantifying and looking at what the economic impacts of heat will be across six sectors, which are agriculture, transportation, health, energy, housing and labor,” she said.

While researchers won’t be able to cover the entire scope of heat-related impacts in this two-year period, the plan is to establish “the foundation for some really innovative work on pushing people to think about heat differently,” she added.

Ward said the researchers plan to take an in-depth look at extreme heat in rural and coastal communities.

A lot of research has been done on how heat impacts urban places, but “we have growing and greater vulnerability in rural areas, with fewer tools in the toolbox to address it,” she said.

In North Carolina, heat-related illness rates in rural areas are many times greater than in urban areas, and most of the solutions, like cooling centers or tree planting campaigns, don’t really translate into rural environments very well.

The same can be applies to coastal areas that are “plagued by some of the same challenges that rural communities are plagued with — real threats to their livelihoods — but also challenges with solutions,” she said. “We’re seeing a combination of increasing temperatures also destroying some of the economic backbone of coastal communities.”

Oyster farms, for example, are highly vulnerable, with some U.S. shellfish growers reporting 100% crop losses in the last couple of years, Ward added.

Ward’s work on extreme heat can be traced back to her days with NOAA, where she focused on the impacts of climate extremes in the coastal plains of the Carolinas.

In 2015, she was sent into coastal communities to talk to residents about issues of which they were particularly concerned.

“I thought that we would be talking about hurricanes. But when we showed up, a lot of the community partners basically said, we know a lot about hurricanes, we don’t know a lot about heat, and heat is really starting to show up in our communities. It was really the communities that started my interest and work in that topic,” Ward said.

When she arrived at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability in 2019, Ward said she noticed that researchers had done great work in identifying populations that are vulnerable to extreme heat and communities have responded by thinking about ways to mitigate the impacts of rising temperatures.

But, she said, those conversations were not being carried over to policymakers.

The heat hub was launched in 2023, “with the mission of bringing together a real cross-sector collaboration to try and think about ways to address heat and inform better policy, and sometimes that policy is public policy, but sometimes it’s also thinking about industry and the role that they play,” Ward said.

The hub’s researchers have worked with the state to develop a heat alert system and helped with county-level heat action plans. Last June, the hub held the HeatWise Policy Partnership Summit.

The hub is currently working with faith-based leaders in the Carolinas, exploring private sector and community-based solutions for heat and energy affordability. The hub is also working with the United Nations to develop a heat management system and is assessing readiness among UN agencies to deal with heat globally.

The science panel that advises the state Coastal Resources Commission is showing with a new report how the findings of a 2022 federal-level report projecting that sea levels will rise by more than a foot by 2050 apply to North Carolina.

Released in mid-October, the “North Carolina 2024 Sea Level Rise Science Update” is the product of the science panel following the commission’s 2022 charge to present any new or significant data and research on sea level rise projections.

The commission was put in place in 1974 when the North Carolina General Assembly adopted the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA. The 13-member commission designates areas of environmental concern, adopts rules and policies for coastal development within those areas, and certifies local land use plans. The state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management staff enforces the commission’s rules.

The U.S. Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flood Hazard Scenarios and Tools Interagency Task Force wrote “Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States,” that was published in February 2022 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Among the task force members are scientists from NOAA, NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense and Environmental Protection Agency.

“In recent years, confidence regarding the expected amount of sea level rise by 2050 has increased,” the science panel recaps from the 2022 technical report in its October 2024 update. Regardless of how much warming occurs by 2100, trajectories evaluated by the 2022 sea level rise technical report indicate sea level rise of 1 foot to 1.4 feet by 2050, relative to sea level in 2000.

“The actual amount will depend on future greenhouse gas emissions, and how much ice is lost from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets,” the science panel continues in its update. “Projections for sea level rise beyond 2050 are less certain because they depend even more strongly on future greenhouse gas emissions and rate of ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica. However, rates of sea level rise are expected to further increase toward the latter half of this century.”

On the science panel, Dr. Reide Corbett is the dean and executive director of the Integrated Coastal Programs at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus.

He told Coastal Review that sea level rise projections continue to improve as new data becomes available and as the scientific community gains a better understanding of global processes changing sea level on different spatial and temporal scales. 

The state’s science panel used the best available and most recent data to provide this 2024 Sea Level Rise Update, Corbett continued, adding that “It is critical that our communities are working with the most informed projections as they develop actionable plans for building more resilience across our coast.”

The strongest and most significant message Corbett said he sees coming from the 2024 update and other recent reports is that North Carolina must plan for at least a 1 foot rise in sea level by 2050. There is little deviation in this value whether projecting from tide gauges or using numerical models, Corbett added

“This is a reality that we need to start planning for today,” he said. “A 1 foot rise in sea level will significantly increase the number of days coastal North Carolina will experience high tide flooding. Communities need to start building these challenges into their land use plans, stormwater plans, and communicating the risks to residents.”

Division of Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller explained to Coastal Review that the science panel is defining sea level rise as an increase in the average height of the sea with respect to a specific reference.

Relative sea level is the combination of three primary factors: the global sea level, vertical land movement and oceanographic effects. These parameters are usually discussed in terms of their rates of temporal change, commonly expressed in millimeters per year, he said.

“Along the North Carolina coast, sea level is rising and the rate of rise varies depending on the location. There are two primary reasons for this variation along different parts of our coast: vertical land motion and the effects of ocean dynamics,” Miller continued.

He explained that this recent update emphasizes that tide gauge observations and modeling for all scenarios are nearly the same out to 2050, “indicating we are solidly on track for at least one foot of sea level rise by 2050.”

Miller noted that 2050 is just 25 years from now.

“To prepare for this, requires community involvement, planning, mitigation, and adaptation to start now,” Miller said.

To help better plan for sea level rise, the Coastal Resources Commission charged its science panel in 2022 with providing periodic updates to support what it called “informed planning and decision making.”

The charge includes a request for the science panel to review every year any “new and significant scientific literature and studies that address the range of implications of sea level rise at the State, sub-regional, and local scales.” If there’s enough new information to warrant an update, the panel is to present these findings to the commission.

Miller said for the science panel to follow through with the directive, the team of scientists held a series of meetings earlier this year to share and discuss any recent data related to sea level rise.

“Given that the painstaking work of preparing sea level rise projections based on the latest science has already been carried out” by the task force, the science panel recaps the key messages detailed in the 2022 technical report. The science panel also gives a brief summary of the regional sea level rise projections most relevant to North Carolina, and provides updated sea level rise projections and assessment of high-tide flooding frequencies for Duck, Beaufort and Wilmington, all based on data from the 2022 technical report.

The science panel sent out a draft of the sea level rise science update for comment this spring.

The document underwent a handful of changes based on public feedback, including the addition of a paragraph listing some of the key impacts of sea level rise, and adding the names of the different scenarios in the 2022 technical report — low, intermediate-low, intermediate, intermediate-high, and high — and referred to these throughout for clarity.

“The five sea level rise scenarios span the range of sea level rise that can be expected under the emissions and warming scenarios considered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report,” or IPCC, the science panel states in its update. The IPCC was created by the United Nations to assess climate change-related science.

“We also added text to explain how these scenarios relate to the emissions pathways and warming scenarios used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report,” the new update continues. And provided more detail on the longer-term scenarios out to 2100.

The science panel did note in its update that, although summarizing the latest science on how these impacts will affect the state “is well beyond the scope of the Sea Level Rise Update Charge to the Science Panel, we refer interested parties to the coastal aspects of the 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, and associated or similar documents (and updates), for a more comprehensive discussion of sea level rise impacts, based on the latest science, to facilitate effective adaptation and mitigation planning.”

The first report the science panel, along with six additional contributors, issued was in March 2010 titled “North Carolina Sea Level Rise Assessment Report,” at the direction of the commission. The science panel recommended the report be reassessed every five years.

In April 2012 the panel issued a follow-up addendum to the report in response to questions from the commission.

That report was met with pushback from certain groups, resulting in a June 2012 law that put restrictions on how the sea level data was collated and used by state agencies and local governments.

The panel released an update in 2015 of the 2010 report.

“The next update was scheduled for 2020. However, due to the COVID pandemic, the 2020 update was postponed. In 2022, the CRC issued a revised charge to the science panel,” Miller said.

The division continues to accept public comments on the newly released update. Send comments to DCMcomments@deq.nc.gov. List “2024 Sea Level Rise Science Update” in the subject line.

“Comments regarding the final report simply serve as an opportunity for citizens to provide thoughts on the finished work and will be provided to the panel for review,” Miller said.

There is a grippingly real sense of dread that some people feel about the state of the environment.

That’s what Dr. Paul Taillie, assistant professor of geography and the environment at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, told an audience last week during the most recent “Science on the Sound” monthly lecture series hosted by Coastal Studies Institute at the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus.

“This is a documented term called ‘climate anxiety,’ where this state of the Earth these days is causing people to be anxious,” he said. “It’s hard to avoid these dramatic, very worrisome headlines about super hurricanes and death and destruction, historic flooding. This feeling of anxiety is valid (and) I think it’s very justified.”

He delivered his talk, “Coastal Ecosystems and Rising Seas: Impending Collapse or Conservation Opportunity?” Thursday evening, one day before Hurricane Helene brought unheard of rainfall and destruction to Western North Carolina.

Taillie acknowledged that while there is reason for concern about the environment, he does not share the full-on anxiety others may experience. “I tend to be very optimistic about things.”

There were reasons for his optimism, he explained, adding he hoped attendees left the evening’s discussion with “more of a sense of optimism about climate change and biodiversity than when you came in the room.”

Taillie pointed out that all systems evolve and change over time and that the plants and animals living in those systems adjust to the changes and have been “for a really long time, hundreds of thousands of years.”

Questions remain about the impact of environmental change on certain species, especially those that are threatened by the changes that are taking place.

Taillie said that when he began his graduate studies, he wanted to look at how species, in general, reacted to environmental changes. One of the difficulties he found in wanting to study the possible benefits of those changes was the reluctance to focus on possible benefits.

“It’s easier to publish a paper about a species going extinct because of climate change than it is to publish a paper about a species benefiting from climate change,” he said. “But that’s been kind of a driving force behind my research.”

Taillie’s first graduate work was to investigate the effects of wildfire on plants and animals, and what he found was that wildfire is, in fact, an important part of the ecosystem.

“I started to notice that there’s all these plants and animals that are uniquely adapted to the conditions created by fire, and that these disturbances that we think of as being really bad can often be really good for biodiversity,” he said.

When he started his doctoral work, he had the chance to study the 2016 Pains Bay Fire in Dare County that burned 15,000 acres in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

“I was super interested to see what happened to this area. As soon as I was allowed to, I went in there,” Taillie continued, showing the audience a picture of burned trees and shrubbery. Just a week later, grass had begun growing among the charred trees.

“These grasses (are) palladium or sawgrass. This is exploding,” he said. “It’s growing superfast and responding to fire very rapidly.”

A year later, he found what was once a forest was completely covered in grasses and fast-growing vegetation.

“This is almost unrecognizable as forest,” Taillie continued. “That fire is catalyzing this transition from forest to marsh.”

Taillie made the point that the grasses that have grown where there was once dense forest are essential for the survival of a number of species.

“These marshes support a lot of really unique animals that hide in these dense grasses,” he explained. “Many birds and small mammals are running around in there. They’re super vulnerable to predation, and so they need this dense grass in order to hide from predators.”

Fire is a relatively spectacular environmental change. The changes that occur in a marsh are more subtle but every bit as dynamic.

“Marshes,” he said, “have these built-in mechanisms of resilience to changes in sea level.”

As sea levels rise, the marsh will often migrate landward, replacing terrestrial systems, especially forest. That movement is apparent in ghost forests, where stands of dead trees immediately adjacent to a live forest.

State and federal agencies, including the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, are concerned about these ghost forests. “These were proliferating all over Dare and Hyde counties.”

Taillie continued that he realized while he studied what was happening that “the ghost forest represented a transition from one stage of this transition from forest to marsh. This is not something to stop.”

Bird surveys that were taken of the living forest and ghost forest showed that the ghost forests are an important part of species survival and adaptation.

“We started to notice that there were lots of interesting birds hanging out in the ghost forests, much different than in the live forest. One of those is a prothonotary warbler,” he said.

A highly migratory species, the prothonotary warbler is described by the Cornell University All About Birds website as “a species of high conservation concern.”

The birds prefer nesting sites in standing dead trees over shallow water, a condition that Taillie described as “the exact sort of conditions that you find in those forests.”

He said his work has taken him from the marsh and barrier islands of coastal North Carolina to the Florida Keys, where he has been studying the ability of a subspecies of marsh rice rats to adapt and survive in their environment.

“Everyone always wants to know, well, if all the Keys were underwater, where did they go? I don’t know,” he said and pointed out that, “They have dealt with hurricanes for a very long time.”

There are, he pointed out, a number of similarities between North Carolina’s barrier islands and the Florida Keys. Both are subject, as an example, to periodic flooding, and it was the flooding that brought the silver rice rat to Taillie’s attention in 2017.

At the time, he was working with the Fish and Wildlife Service following Hurricane Irma. The agency was concerned that because of storm surge, “this entire endangered species could be no longer in existence.”

It quickly became apparent that the silver rice rat population was holding its own, even though the storm surge of 2 to 3 feet should have inundated the Keys where the rats lived.

How they survived is a mystery, Taillie said.

SUPPLY – Tens of thousands of acres of wetlands and hundreds of acres of salt marshes will be restored and protected in the state with funding from a multimillion-dollar federal grant recently awarded to a coalition of states, including North Carolina.

The $421 million Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, will also result in the addition of 3,000 acres to North Carolina’s state parks system, reforestation of 55,000 acres, the initiation of an urban tree planting program, and “so much more,” Gov. Roy Cooper said.

Against the backdrop and under the canopy of towering longleaf pines rising from sandy peat soil and wiregrass covering the forest bed of the Green Swamp Preserve in Brunswick County, Cooper, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel, and others on a balmy Tuesday afternoon touted how the funding will be used to reduce carbon emissions, boost the economy, and help communities become more resilient to natural hazards.

Related: EPA awards $421 million to multistate-nonprofit coalition

“You think about what this money will do — fight climate change to protect communities from flooding, put money in the pockets of North Carolina families to boost our tourism industry,” Cooper said. “We know that nature itself can play a significant role in carbon reduction. Renewable energy and the power sector and (electric vehicles) on the road get most of the headlines and attention when we’re talking about carbon reduction and it’s important for us to keep doing those things. But, it’s estimated that this grant will have the equivalent carbon reduction of taking six million gas powered cars off the road.”

The EPA announced last week that the Atlantic Conservation Coalition, which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and The Nature Conservancy, are to receive the funds that will be used to work in conjunction with nonprofit organizations for conservation and restoration projects.

In all, there are 21 proposed projects that are estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 28 million metric tons by 2050.

“The peatlands here in the Green Swamp Preserve have existed for millennia, remaining natural and undrained the way a peatland is supposed to be,” Regan said. “Peatlands like this cover around one-third of the Earth’s surface and store twice as much carbon as all of the world’s forests. Because these swamps contain vast amounts of carbon, when they’re drained or burned, they release huge quantities of climate pollution and can no longer serve as natural buffers for flooding and wildfires, not only threatening biological diversity and ecological health, but also threatening the health of the surrounding community.”

The Biden administration has made the largest investment ever to tackle climate change, he said, including initiating what he referred to as the most innovative and exciting programs – the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program.

The program aims to help implement community-driven solutions to reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice and help accelerate the country’s transition to clean energy.

North Carolina’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources applied for the grant in April as part of the multi-state coalition, one that is “focused on the protection and restoration of over 200,000 acres of coastal habitat, forest and farmland,” Regan said.

Department of Cultural and Natural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson focused on two major benefits of the grant, the first of which is conserving and restoring degraded streams, forests and wetlands that will pull carbon out of the sky and reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the air.

“And then, second, these preserved and restored natural lands and waterways will make our state more resilient to the increasingly frequent and intense storms and other devastating effects from climate change,” he said. “Our department is really excited about this.”

Regan later said that all four states have signed a memorandum of agreement, well before the deadline set by the EPA.

Congressman Nickels called the grant an “incredible investment.”

“By making these important investments we’re ensuring a sustainable future, not only for our environment, but for our economy as well,” he said. “It’s essential that we maintain this for generations to come.”

In a new plan to address climate pollution, state officials have taken what they call a “different approach” by making natural and working lands conservation and restoration a priority to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials announced late Tuesday the state Priority Climate Action Plan, which “identifies high priority, ready-to-implement” greenhouse gas reduction measures that will provide “significant climate, air quality, and other co-benefits” to the state and its communities.

As required under the first phase of a federal grant program, the plan was developed over the past six months and then submitted this week to the Environmental Protection Agency. The state intends to use the plan to inform the application due April 1 for the $4.6 billion in competitive grants, the second phase. The EPA is to award these grants ranging from $2 million to $500 million later in the year. If NCDEQ is awarded the grant, the action plan will be developed into a Comprehensive Climate Action Plan due July 5, 2025. 

While most of the measures in the 189-page plan focuses on greenhouse gas emissions sources — transportation, electric power generation, industry, buildings and waste management – NCDEQ “took a different approach to develop priority (natural and working lands) measures, performed separately but in parallel to the development and prioritization of measures to reduce (greenhouse gas) emissions in other sectors.”

The plan explains that there is “compelling potential” for natural and working lands to “substantially offset (greenhouse gas emissions) by permanently storing atmospheric carbon in the ground and plants,” the report states. “The natural and working lands “sector ‘netted out’ 34% of the state’s gross GHG emissions in 2020.”

Jacob Boyd, who helped develop the natural and working lands section of the plan, told Coastal Review Wednesday that incorporating natural and working lands into the plan has been considered since the start.

“From the very beginning, the department had made the decision that natural and working lands should be a component, not just the greenhouse gas emitting sectors,” he said.

Boyd, who is the new salt marsh program director for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, was involved in the plan through his previous role as habitat and enhancement section chief at NCDEQ’s Division of Marine Fisheries. Boyd was with the division for 17 years, serving in various roles until last month when he joined the nonprofit conservation organization that also publishes Coastal Review.

Boyd explained that with past plans and strategies, the focus was on resilience with carbon sequestration as a side benefit. “We’re still highlighting the resilience co-benefits,” Boyd said, but now it’s more carbon-focused. “This is really the first time we’ve had an opportunity to do that, which I think it’s great.”

An interagency effort, the Priority Climate Action Plan was built using nearly 50 existing state reports, including the greenhouse gas inventory, a clean energy plan, a clean transportation plan, a zero-emission vehicle plan, climate strategy reports, and a natural and working lands action plan. These were reviewed and consolidated into sectors.

Natural and working lands offer protection and restoration and voiding emissions, Boyd explained.  

“All land is comprised of carbon, which is a greenhouse gas, and some soils and land have higher amounts of that carbon, “Boyd explained, adding coastal habitats such as salt marshes, pocosins and peatlands are some of the highest carbon-rich habitats in the world.

If we lose those, most of that carbon gets emitted back into the atmosphere, but when we protect those coastal habitats, it keeps the carbon in those soils and emits less carbon, and the emissions can be avoided.

“We not only get those carbon benefits, but we also protect natural resources and critical habitat and provide flood resiliency,” he said.  

Boyd said he’s been involved in this type of planning since 2018 when NCDEQ began developing its Natural and Working Lands Action Plan, published in 2020, and related projects, including the recent N.C. Coastal Habitat Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

Because of this experience, Boyd said he was asked to be involved in the action plan development and implementation. It took about six months to develop.

The working group used as a roadmap the 2020 land action plan, which highlighted strategies like high-carbon coastal habitats that help avoid emissions and with carbon sequestration, as a roadmap for this section. As they progressed through developing, these important strategies rose to the top as being needing to be some of the important components of the plan.

The Coastal Federation will be one of a few organizations being brought in to implement projects to conserve and restore these high-carbon habitats.

“We are excited to partner with the State to safeguard and rejuvenate coastal ecosystems given their important role in storing and sequestering carbon. Salt marshes, peatlands, and adjacent working lands also provide an important buffer for coastal communities, offering resilience against extreme weather events and sea level rise,” Executive Director Braxton Davis said. “This Plan seeks to harness the strength of nature itself as a key line of defense in combating climate change and sea level rise.”

Boyd said though he’s transited from NCDEQ to the Coastal Federation, he will continue to work on the action plan for the natural and working land sector.

The plan also notes there are five executive orders in place for climate action and greenhouse gas reduction targets, many of which are focused on the transportation sector.

Transportation, the largest emissions sector, represents about 36% of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. That makes transportation measures a top priority. These include increasing zero-emission and electric vehicles, including in the state fleet as well as school and transit buses, installing and maintaining an electric vehicle charging network, and going after programs to increase efficiency and reduce emissions at port and freight terminals.

“The N.C. Department of Transportation is working with its partners in the public and private sectors to ensure North Carolina is prepared as we transition to a clean energy economy and invest in more sustainable and accessible transportation options,” Jamie Kritzer, assistant director of communications for NCDOT, told Coastal Review Wednesday.

In keeping with the Cooper administration’s executive order to increase the total number of registered zero-emission vehicles, Kritzer continued, NCDOT led the creation of the Clean Transportation Plan, which was developed in about a year by a diverse group of stakeholders and released last April.

“NCDOT is working to carry out the plan’s strategies to encourage the transition to zero-emission vehicles, ensure electric vehicle charging stations and other clean transportation infrastructure are in place, and help make clean mobility options accessible to everyone,” he said.

NCDOT and the NCDEQ also are working on the measure in the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program related to reducing vehicle miles traveled, Kritzer explained.

“Together, our agencies will identify bicycle and pedestrian projects in the rural parts of the state, especially in lower income and disadvantaged communities where current funding through NCDOT programs does not exist. These projects will help reduce vehicle miles traveled, which supports important goals set forth in the Clean Transportation Plan,” Kritzer said.

Southern Environmental Law Center Climate Initiative Leader Alys Campaigne said in a statement about Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina submitting Priority Climate Action Plans to the EPA that the South plays an outsized role in contributing to climate change and severe, accelerating impacts are impacting vulnerable residents with higher pollution exposure and less ability to adapt.

“We applaud Southern Governors and Mayors for developing bold local strategies to protect people from pollution and invest in innovative projects that spur a cleaner economy and more resilient communities. We now have sector-based data on the sources of climate pollution and a roadmap for taking meaningful action in each of our six states,” Campaigne said. “These plans will help draw other competitive public and private investments to our region to deliver on the clean energy transition and respond to community needs.”

DEQ is accepting comments and suggestions through June 3 for program, which will be considered as the state develops its Comprehensive Climate Action Plan for the implementation phase. Send comments through the online form, via email to cprg@deq.nc.gov or by calling 919-707-8757.

RALEIGH — While the need to manage water in the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula is a centuries-old endeavor, rising sea levels and increasing impacts from climate change have been overwhelming prior flood-mitigation methods in the sprawling lowlands within the nation’s second-largest estuarine system.

“The Scuppernong River Basin in the heart of the Albemarle-Pamlico region in eastern North Carolina faces significant water management challenges due to factors such as changing precipitation patterns, manipulated land-use, and increasing water demand,” the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, or APNEP, explained in a recent newsletter.

Piecemeal efforts to address the challenges are now starting to be stitched together in a regional approach, spurred by a $50,000 grant for community engagement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office for Coastal Management Digital Coast and the National Estuarine Research Reserve Association, followed by a $200,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Quality and a $200,000 in-kind matching grant for the recently launched Scuppernong Water Management Study.

“The goal was to have that community engagement and local input shape the study and inform, so it’s not just a desktop exercise, an engineering exercise,” Stacey Feken, APNEP project manager, recently told Coastal Review.

Origins of the study go back to plans to update a water-management plan for Lake Phelps, which had not been updated since the early 1980s. Pettigrew State Park was trying to figure out how to do the update, Feken recalled and, in the process, park officials decided that since water knew no boundaries, it would make sense to look at its management on a regional basis.

“We wanted to do this in collaboration with partners in the area, other land-conservation managers and the landowners and the communities,” she said, recounting what Pettigrew officials had conveyed.

Pettigrew had approached APNEP about five years ago for help, Feken said, and the partnership has since taken the helm in developing the study. 

“They brought us in to serve as a neutral, science-based partner,” she said. “So, we’re serving as a convener, doing everything from technical assistance and grant writing to the community engagement associated with the study.”

Grant applications for state parks were able to be broadened beyond park boundaries, and a funding request was made for the planning and engineering feasibility study through DEQ’s Water Resources Division.

Although the focus was initially on Washington County, where most of the 5,830-acre Pettigrew State Park and Lake Phelps are located, it was soon discovered that nearby local governments in Tyrrell County and organizations representing the counties and communities had been long asking for state assistance to cope with flooding issues.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the planning. Once the crisis passed, APNEP contacted the Albemarle Commission, a regional government council, to help in the effort. Other partners that have joined are Buckridge Coastal Reserve, Washington County, Tyrrell County, Washington County Soil and Water, Tyrrell County Soil and Water, Pettigrew State Park, Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, and the North Carolina State University Cooperative Extension.  

A steering committee comprised of local stakeholders was created to serve as a liaison to the communities, ensure effectiveness and to advise the engagement team, which, in addition to APNEP, includes representatives from the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, North Carolina Sea Grant and The Nature Conservancy.

Cary-based contractor Kris Bass Engineering, through models, mapping and other tools, is to identify flood-prone areas, enhance understanding of water movement throughout the region and identify potential solutions to flooding.

“The study will help inform development of a comprehensive plan to address water management issues on both private and public lands inter-connected by an extensive drainage network on the northern portion of the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula,” the APNEP newsletter said.

As part of the comprehensive study, organizers are asking the public to share observations of how flooding impacts these communities by Jan. 15 through an online survey.

Results from the study could be used to inform other more localized studies, such as the Pettigrew State Park water management plan update, Feken said.

“My understanding with the engineers, they’re developing the modeling for the study so that it can be easily replicated in other areas of the region,” she said.

Feken said that she expects that another study would be done in the near future for the southern portion of the Albemarle-Pamlico region, which includes Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County and the Pungo River area.

Located within some of the most rural and economically distressed counties in the state, communities in the Albemarle-Pamlico region have often felt forgotten as surrounding beach communities and urban areas with fat tax bases were thriving. 

But the uniqueness and ecological importance of the region have lately brought remarkable amounts of attention from conservation groups, nonprofits and government agencies, as reflected in efforts of groups including the North Carolina’s Natural and Working Lands initiative, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, Coastal Resilience Community of Practice and the Audubon Society’s community-driven projects, among others.

The ecosystem is extraordinarily rich, and situated just feet above sea level, vulnerable, with pocosin peatlands, forests, sounds, bays and lakes that provide habitat for wildlife that includes endangered red wolves, black bears and numerous other mammals, plus thousands of waterfowl and other birds, as well as countless amphibians, fish and reptiles.

“It’s just such an amazing landscape in different ways,” Feken said.

A new collaboration of coastal flood monitoring efforts in Virginia and North Carolina could offer a broader view of how king tides affect coastal communities along both states’ coastlines.

The North Carolina King Tides Project, an international initiative to document extreme high tide events with photos, and Wetlands Watch, an environmental nonprofit organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, began a concerted outreach last week, just ahead of the late-August king tides that began Sunday.

For the North Carolina King Tides Project, the public can upload photos of flooding and water level gauges to illustrate water depths to the Coastal Observer app. Using Wetlands Watch’s sea level rise app, volunteers can drop GPS pins while walking along the edge of floodwaters to map how far water encroaches inland, or the horizontal extent of flooding. Tutorials on using the apps are available on both websites.

Organizers hope these complementary collection tools will lead to more comprehensive data on these highest high and lowest low tides of the year.

The North Carolina King Tides Project was established to help visualize how normal high tides could look in the future. It was created with support from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant from 2015 to 2019, but the project has relied on volunteers ever since.

Project founder Dr. Christine Voss told Coastal Review in an email Thursday that the initiative was glad to welcome Wetlands Watch and their team to North Carolina.

“We are grateful to have them here. I think we can learn more about the impacts of coastal inundation and salt intrusion along coastal NC by using both of our apps to document the extent of flooding during king tide events, which are natural events that have always occurred, but give us a way to visualize how future, higher sea levels will impact our coast,” she said.

Though the initiative has been unfunded for several years, Voss said the project “has been able to continue by the grace of several dedicated volunteers, whom we appreciate. It is a community science project for NC coastal citizens, by NC coastal citizens and they continue to submit images and data, and help one another learn how to deal with the impacts and complexities of rising sea levels along our coast.”

Wetlands Watch Executive Director Mary-Carson Stiff told Coastal Review in an interview Thursday that she was also excited about the combined effort.

“We have some shared watershed projects through green infrastructure and conservation, landscaping, training professionals at certifications for maintenance of a lot of those practices,” she said. “We do a lot of work with different states and have benefited tremendously from cross-state partnerships in the policy space too. So, seems like a no-brainer.”

Wetlands Watch and the North Carolina King Tides Project held a virtual information session Wednesday to explain their goals and review how the apps work.

Wetlands Watch Community Engagement Project Manager Gabi Kinney explained that king tides occur when the full or new moon’s orbit is closest to Earth, called in perigee. The moon’s gravitational pull effectively raises these high tides.

These tidal events provide a glimpse of future tides, Kinney said. “We can study king tides of today to get a feel for what it might look like in the future with sea level rise and all of these projections.”

Kinney said Wetlands Watch connected with the North Carolina King Tides Project after NOAA’s climate program office approached the organization to expand its annual “Catch the King” weekend effort to document king tides in coastal Virginia.

Catch the King is an annual tide-mapping event that encourages volunteers to collect flooding data during the highest tides of the year. This year’s is Oct. 27-29 in coastal Virginia.

Wetlands Watch selected North Carolina for a few reasons, Kinney said. A graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington and previous intern with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, she has connections with the area and is familiar with the flood risk that Wilmington faces, and she learned how flooding is impacting other North Carolina coastal communities through Voss.

Voss is a coastal ecologist who retired about a year ago from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City. During the webinar she explained that while she’s officially retired, she’s still helping with the project.

She said that one of the reasons the King Tides Project was launched was because imagery is powerful in communicating what is taking place with flood events and sea level rise “because it’s hard to imagine what the scientists are telling us.”

Though the project technically is no longer funded, “there’s a core group of volunteers who are very passionate about it, and the public seems to be remaining passionate about it. So, we’re trying to keep everything going, and thank you, with help from Wetlands Watch,” Voss added.

Kinney explained that she and Voss had discussed how to meaningfully merge the two programs. They kickstarted the joint effort in June. Since then, Voss has published a king tides calendar for 2023 and program information. Kinney has connected with nonprofit organizations, local and state agencies, and others working in the flood resilience monitoring space in North Carolina to establish interest. She is also available for training and questions for interested groups and residents.

“With the merging of the two programs, it’s actually been a really nice collaboration because we kind of complement each other’s datasets rather than overlapping,” Kinney said.

Kinney said one of her goals is to foster bigger and broader partnerships between North Carolina and Virginia.

“We each do a lot of flood risk and resilience building work,” Kinney explained. “I think that this is such a great segue for Wetlands Watch to get a view on what’s going on in North Carolina, for us to provide our support wherever we can, and for us to learn from you all in terms of collaboration.”

Another goal is to build awareness about sea level rise and flood risk. “Through community science, we can give people a tool like an app to use and actually go out in the field and feel like they’re part of a climate solution,” she said.

“Once we collect all of this king tide data, we want to try to figure out more pathways to get the data in the hands of people who can use them, how can we export this data and how can we use them to contribute to planning decisions, climate adaptation, even just more public awareness,” she said. “Eventually, later on in the project, we’ll kind of take a look back at all of our data that we collected and then see what we can go from there.”

Volunteers are encouraged to collect data during this week’s king tides that continue through Sept. 4, with particular interest in the super full moon in perigee Wednesday. Though there is no formal event, volunteers are encouraged to download both apps and submit what they observe.

Organizers said that safety is a key priority and to avoid unsafe conditions such as heavy rain, winds, and rapid flood waters.

Remaining king tides for this year are Sept. 25-Oct. 4, Oct. 27-Nov. 1, and Nov. 26-28.

To become involved, email Wetlands Watch Community Engagement Project Manager Gabi Kinney at gabi.kinney@wetlandswatch.org.

Tara Hinton, a rising junior at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, spent her summer in the archives room of Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island listening to hours and hours of recorded oral histories for quotes about the environment and change.

Funded through the university’s Office of Undergraduate Research’s accelerated research program, Hinton told Coastal Review that she is working on a two-part project that began with mining the archives at the museum.

“We have hundreds of oral histories in here and a lot of them haven’t been transcribed,” she said on a recent sunny afternoon in the archives room, which is tucked away in the museum’s library.

“That’s the first part of my job, mining through those to look for evidence of environmental change, because they are great historical and cultural records,” she said. “But they also have a treasure trove of scientific knowledge. I found a couple of quotes on the impact of Hurricane Floyd on the fisheries. In 1999, a lot of the crabs were wiped out and the crabbing wasn’t good because you had all this runoff.”

There were scientific papers published on the storm’s impact on the crab industry, but those papers came out about five years later. “That knowledge was there in 1999,” she said, adding there’s so much that you can actually find if you look locally.

Hinton is listening to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s Local Fisheries Knowledge Pilot Project, as well, which she described as a collection of oral histories with local fishers about changes that they were seeing. “Some of the richest stuff that I’ve been getting has been from fishers in this NOAA project. There’s been a lot of change.”

For the second part of the project, she interviewed community members about the environmental changes they’ve observed. She had eight interviews, a few of them with couples.

“I think climate change is a global issue, but there’s not a whole lot of local narratives about it,” she said. “I think the important part of getting those local perspectives is that you get a finer-scale view of the changes that are going on.”

During the interviews she asked about their background, everyday changes related to environmental factors they’ve observed, such as the daily and long-term impacts of every day flooding, about ghost forests, recovery and adaptation since Hurricane Florence hit in 2018, the role of Down East churches in that recovery, and what those in the fisheries industry have observed, because “you get that immediate perspective, especially with fish ranges changing with climate change.”

Some of the main lessons coming out of the interviews, Hinton said, are that climate change is felt most by the people who are already economically, physically and socially disadvantaged, and access to local community resources, like the Carteret Long Term Recovery Alliance, drastically impacted recovery times after Hurricane Florence, with those not having access to those resources having the longest recovery times. The alliance provides assistance to survivors who sustained damage or loss as a result of a disaster affecting the Carteret County area.

One thing she observed during the interviews is that recovery means something different to everyone impacted by Florence. “Some people feel like they have their lives back together, while others are still struggling to regain a sense of stability.”

Another interesting thing coming out of the interviews is everyday adaptations, Hinton continued. “Whether it’s a high-rise chicken coop, a detachable birdhouse, or putting in a workspace below a newly raised house, everyone seems to find their own unique ways to adapt to storm events and recurrent flooding. Every day I am blown away by the strength and resourcefulness of Down East communities.”

She interviewed Robbie Phillips, past disaster recovery director for the Carteret Long Term Recovery Alliance. This was the second interview for Phillips by the museum. The first was not long after Florence.

Phillips said a lot has changed since that first interview.

“I wanted to document the changes and how much I’ve learned over the years working in storm recovery. I also think it’s a great idea to document the stories about the disaster experience of individuals. The stories show how a community works together in difficult times,” she said. The stories show how God can work and inspire people in these times as well. It’s a great project to capture this type of work.”

Phillips hopes that her interview will help raise awareness about the unequal and unjust disaster recovery process across the economic divide. “Those with more financial resources recover quicker, better and with far less hassle, particularly with insurance companies.”

Phillips said she also hopes this project and her input will help encourage conversations about appropriate housing for the workforce.

“A community’s health can be measured by the way we take care of the less fortunate and our workforce. It would be beautiful to see those with more resources being put to the end of the line for insurance settlements, contract labor, work teams,” Phillips said. “We need to learn to see through the lens of those who suffer more in a disaster and recovery and work to relieve their suffering first. That’s what the Carteret Long Term Recovery Alliance has tried to do. The elderly, the poor, families with special needs children in them, and families with children in them get resources and help first. We have it backwards in this country.”

Hinton plans to work on this project through the next school year. Long term, she intends to create a living, digital archive of these quotes that can be accessed online.

“I think the main goal is to document how people Down East are seeing and understand climate change. And then to do more rigorous research on oral histories that have already been done. But ultimately, it’s to make the story of climate change relevant to people here. And maybe get hopefully give them more tools to, to like, address climate change at a local level,” she said.

Hinton headed back home to the mountains this past weekend, before the fall semester starts at Chapel Hill, where she is currently majoring in environmental studies with a minor in statistics.

From Sylva, she heard about the museum from her neighbor Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. He connected Hinton with the museum’s executive director, Karen Willis Amspacher, who welcomed Hinton on board. She began the research project in early June.

Amspacher told Coastal Review that Hinton has done a great job of going through the oral history collection to identify references to environmental change that people have been talking about for the last 20 to 30 years, especially the fishing for fishermen.

“We have a ton of fishing interviews that were done for different projects. She’s listening to pick up on the references to change in the temperature in the water, change grass beds, changing in the landscape, plus she’s doing interviews with people of all ages to learn more about what they’re seeing as environmental change,” Amspacher said.

“She’s so gentle about it, she understands the connection between the culture and the environment,” Amspacher continued, adding she has the right approach, and she’s knowledgeable of the subject. “We’re planning to continue to work with her through the school year and hopefully next summer again.”

Amspacher said the research will go into the museum’s collection, and will use quotes Hinton collected for an exhibition.

“We’ll be using the full transcriptions to inform researchers who are coming here trying to understand how people are reacting or responding to ghost forests or more frequent flooding. We plan to use it in a multitude of ways,” she said.

HARKERS ISLAND – About a quarter-mile along the Soundside Loop Trail behind Cape Lookout National Seashore’s visitor center is a two-board wooden fence, indicating that hikers need to make a sharp left turn to stay on the path.

In addition to guiding foot traffic on the 0.8-mile-long trail through maritime forest, the fence at the bend is where a new public science project called “Chronolog” was recently installed. The online tool helps track changes in the environment. In this case, the ghost forest on that side of the island.

When hikers walk by, they can place their smartphone in the gray bracket attached to the top of the fence post to align their photo, take the shot, then email it to Chronolog. Once received, the photo will be added to that location’s time-lapse almost immediately.

Chronolog houses crowd-sourced time-lapses of parks, nature centers, wildlife organizations, schools and museums. Currently, there are more than 500 Chronolog stations in 45 states. The Cape Lookout station is the 18^th on the coast and there have been 10 submissions so far in the month since it was installed.

On a breezy morning in late June at the visitor center, Nate Toering, Cape Lookout’s chief of interpretation and education, explained that the Chronolog allows them to make informed decisions for managing that area of the park and provides “a better understanding of what’s going on in the environment around us.”

This Chronolog is part of a bigger project with the National Park Service, North Carolina State University and Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center. Four NC State undergraduate students worked with three mentors at the university on a ghost forest communication strategy for a senior-level course. The students wrote and designed a brochure as well as a “glideshow” that’s similar to a slideshow, called “Ghost Forests: The Dead Trees Down East.” Down East is a group of more than a dozen rural communities east of Beaufort. 

Ghost forests occur when healthy coastal forests are repeatedly exposed to saltwater through high winds, tides or storms, making the plants, or trees, with low salt tolerance die off, eventually being replaced by salt marsh habitat.

From the Chronolog photo station down the trail, Toering pointed out the gradual transition of the dead trees that are rotting and breaking, but farther inland, there are super healthy trees.

He said that they’re finding at the National Seashore more salt-tolerant species in areas that didn’t have salt-tolerant species before, and are interested in observing the growth of the ghost forest and potential erosion in that area.

Jutting past the ghost forest, several yards away from the existing station, are the jagged remnants of a walkway across a salt marsh that had been destroyed by Hurricane Florence in 2018.

Toering said there are plans to rebuild the walkway, hopefully by the end of the year. When that build is complete, there will be a second Chronolog installed looking toward the ghost forest in the direction of the existing Chronolog, to provide a panoramic view.

Long term, especially after the second Chronolog is installed, there will be a more site-specific assessment of the growth of the ghost forest, such as how fast an area that used to be a forest is transitioning into salt marsh, he explained.

Toering said that as a ranger, he provides frontline messaging on ghost forests and encourages visitors to participate in this public science project. Adding, he’s trying to get people engaged, more knowledgeable about their environment and more caring about what’s going on around them. “Because one way or another, it impacts all of us.”

Part of that frontline messaging is providing to visitors the brochure, “Ghost Forests: What are they and how can you spot one?” that the NC State students designed for their senior course, called a capstone project.

Dr. Erin Seekamp, distinguished professor of resilience and sustainability and director of the Coastal Resilience and Sustainability Initiative at NC State, coordinated the project.

Seekamp has been working with the Down East community since 2015 on adaptation planning for Cape Lookout’s historic districts, and had discussed with Core Sound Museum and Heritage Center Executive Director Karen Willis Amspacher that ghost forests are a good indicator of the vulnerabilities in these communities. 

When Seekamp was approached by a colleague to design a capstone project for the interdisciplinary degree, environmental sciences, she said she immediately connected the two. 

Serving as community liaison, Seekamp brought in as a ghost forest expert for the project Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources associate professor Dr. Marcelo Ardón, who has been behind installing Chronologs on the coast, and science communicator Michelle Jewell with the Department of Applied Ecology and president of the Science Communicators of North Carolina.

Seekamp said that this project helps students recognize how applied science is important, and integrating that with community engagement. Engaging students in the process of observation opens the door to being more aware of your environment and watching change, as well as using science to understand the changes that are occurring.

The idea is to grow the project in future semesters. “We really want to embed the next phases to include integration of schools and that intergenerational learning component,” with parents and grade-school students, and have further conversations about the future and adaptation, Seekamp said.

Amspacher said Core Sound is dedicated to learning and sharing more about the changing environment along the coast and especially Down East.  

“Partnering with NC State and other universities has opened doors for us to be involved with the important research taking place around us. We are very thankful to bring the community into this conversation. We look forward to working with local students to use this Chronolog project as a way to increase their — and their families’ — understanding of how saltwater is already impacting our landscape.”

Students on the project were Rachel DeChicio, Andrew Barfield, Jordan Strickland and Arden Lumpkin, who each graduated this year with a bachelor’s in environmental sciences.

DeChicio told Coastal Review that one of her biggest takeaways from this project is how important it is to focus on a community’s culture and values when communicating about climate change topics such as saltwater intrusion and ghost forests. 

“Harkers Island has an amazing community that loves their home and has deep ties to the land, so it is important to create educational materials on climate change that inspire curiosity and not fear,” DeChicio said. “I hope people who visit the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center are able to learn a little bit about saltwater intrusion and ghost forests from our products, and are then able to identify why their coastal forests are dying. I hope seeing the formation of ghost forests on Harkers Island and having the knowledge to name that occurrence empowers people to learn more about combating climate change.”

Barfield added that he learned through this project how ghost forests are a very visible aspect of our changing climate. 

“It is my hope that ghost forests can be used as a tool to further educate the public on the many ways that our world around us is changing. The more involvement that we get from local communities, then the better chance we have of adapting to these changes moving forward,” Barfield said.

Strickland said in an email that the two main things he learned while working on this project are the technicalities of designing and developing science communication products and ghost forests in general. 

“One of the main reasons why I chose this project as my top pick when we were deciding teams, was because I never heard of the term ‘ghost forests’ before,” he said. “Of course, I knew they were not referring to an actual haunted forest, so it intrigued me.”

After learning what ghost forests are, and how they have begun to spread on the coast of Harkers Island, he said he wanted to help provide the community with information about what ghost forests indicate.

“I knew if me, as an environmental science major, didn’t know much about ghost forests, then that means most of the general public doesn’t as well. Ghost forests are not only an indication of climate change and sea level rise, but also foreshadow how our coastal forests could end up as these two factors continue to impact the NC coast in the coming years,” Strickland added.

Lumpkin said the project taught her the importance of properly communicating climate science through the lens of who it impacts. The ghost forests that are popping up and growing quickly along the coast of these Down East communities are a tangible example of the effects of sea level rise and saltwater intrusion. Viewing this issue through the eyes of a community member gives you a wider perspective on the best way to communicate it. 

“The Down East community has a rich, generational history and connection with their land and have persevered in the face of many challenges,” she said. “My biggest hope with our project is that it will spark curiosity and conversation about climate change among the community. The Core Sound Waterfowl Museum is such an important place visited frequently by residents and I hope that our project can, at the least, be the start of a conversation about climate change impacts.”

Jewell explained to Coastal Review that this type of class project works all the way around: “The community’s needs are heard and answered, the students receive training and experience in co-creation and science communication, and the researchers will get more data from this changing landscape. Truly encapsulating the N.C. State mission of research, teaching, and extension.”

Science communication is an iterative process, and the hope is that this piece is the first of many touchpoints, Jewell said. “Our aim is to create a space for community members to engage with the changes happening around them. And that engagement can come in many forms,” from submitting photos at the Chronolog site, to being able to identify and understand ghost forests. 

The Chronolog station on Harkers Island is one of the nearly 20 that Ardón with NC State has either installed or helped coordinate the installation along the coast.

He said in an interview that the idea to have the public help monitor ghost forests dates back a few years and was asking the public to submit photos through an online platform before discovering Chronolog while on vacation on Bald Head Island.

Chronolog’s process appealed to Ardón. Rather than photos being submitted from all over, have the public take photos of the same location to make tracking the changes easier to observe.

He explained that these forests and marshes change on the scales of decades to centuries, but they’re probably changing a lot faster, on the scales of years to decades, “but that’s still pretty slow for us to see on a regular basis. I think the idea was if we have these photographs, then maybe it’ll become a little bit easier to see the change of these ecosystems.”

Ardón said in addition to looking at change over time, he wants to use the photos to study how the seasons change the landscape. 

With a grant through the National Science Foundation, Ardon began in 2021 installing Chronolog stations at Goose Creek State Park, Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, E. Merle Waterfowl Impoundment, and Swan Quarter National Wildlife Refuge.  

After installing the first round, he said N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources officials liked the project and decided to fund 11 more stations. He worked with the site managers to determine the best location for each Chronolog, depending on what they wanted to document, such as a marsh or a living shoreline.

“For the ghost forests, I’m really interested in looking at how long the snags, the standing dead trees, actually last, because there’s been some studies of those snags but there’s not a lot of good fine-scaled information of: How often do they fall over? Is it just after big storms? Is it small storms? Is it just after time that eventually they fall over? So those are the kinds of questions that I want to answer with these stations,” he said. 

Nature-based solutions, like living shorelines to help slow erosion in estuarine waters and permeable pavement that allows stormwater to seep through the ground and protects water quality, can be spotted in a growing number of North Carolina’s coastal communities.

The strategy, which encourages more natural approaches to solve environmental problems that are made worse by climate change, has been adopted on the state and federal levels.

In November 2022, the White House announced its “Nature-Based Solutions Roadmap for the United States,” a report to the National Climate Task Force. The report calls for the accelerated use of nature-based solutions across the federal government, including through potential policy, guidance and program changes, and outlines five areas of focus.

Two authors of the report and its accompanying resource guide were joined online Wednesday by representatives from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss the strategy. The webinar was part of the fourth session of the series, “Nature-Based Solutions: Current Issues,” hosted by Duke University’s National Ecosystem Services Partnership and the Resilience Roadmap Project.

The report includes “an outline of strategic recommendations to put America on a path that will unlock the full potential of nature-based solutions to address climate change, nature loss, and inequity,” White House officials said. It’s the first time the U.S. has developed a strategy to scale up nature-based solutions, and it’s a commitment to invest in the fight against climate change. 

“Nature-based solutions, like protecting forests or restoring coastal marshes, are a fundamental pillar of fighting the climate crisis, just like reducing greenhouse gas emissions, deploying renewable energy, and increasing energy efficiency. Natural solutions can reduce emissions, remove carbon from the atmosphere and lock it away, make ecosystems more resilient, and lower climate change risks for people,” according to the report.

Why nature-based solutions?

Sarah Mason, senior policy associate at the Nicholas Institute for Energy Environment and Sustainability at Duke University, was moderator for the webinar. She said there’s been a growing interest in nature-based solutions coming from both the public and private sectors, along with a strong desire to scale up implementation. The webinar is an effort to inform the growing interest.

Heather Tallis, assistant director for Biodiversity and Conservation Sciences with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, explained that in the context of the report, nature-based solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage or restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges.

“And, very importantly here, simultaneously providing benefits for both people and the environment,” she said.

In addition to nature-based solutions being used for their mitigation, risk reduction and adaptation benefits, there’s a broader framing and a clear recognition of other social benefits from these solutions, including jobs, water quality, food production, wildlife and biodiversity support, community development, health and many others, Tallis said.

Nature is “absolutely critical” to the economy and lives as well as reaching national goals on several major administration priorities, including climate change, equity and economic prosperity, Tallis said.

One goal already in place is Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful initiative, one of President Biden’s first acts when he took office. The initiative released May 2021 outlines a nationwide conservation goal of 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Other efforts she noted are the complementary American Conservation Stewardship Atlas that tracks the America the Beautiful’s initiative, and the National Nature Assessment by the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

President Joe Biden called for the National Nature Assessment in an executive order signed on Earth Day April 22, 2022, to take stock of U.S. lands, waters, wildlife, biodiversity, ecosystems and the benefits that they provide, Tallis explained. There is a public comment period open through the end of March asking for input on developing this assessment.

In that same executive order, Biden called for a report identifying opportunities for accelerating nature-based solutions across the country. In response, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Council on Environmental Quality and the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy co-led a large interagency effort to produce the nature-based solutions roadmap and worked with representatives from 15 agencies and many departments, Tallis said.

“This is really a very broad, all-of-government effort, and this is the first time that there has been a set of strategic recommendations addressing all federal agencies on where the biggest opportunities are to unlock the full potential of nature-based solutions,” she said. The main takeaway from the report is that nature-based solutions should be go-to options for climate equity and prosperity. “And we know how to get there now with a strategic roadmap and the steps that are laid out here.”

What’s in the roadmap?

Lydia Olander, director of nature-based resilience at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said that with the roadmap, “We wanted to give agencies a strategic path to unlock the full potential of nature-based solutions and to shine a light on the different opportunities to implement nature-based solutions in newer areas, such as hazard reduction and infrastructure that have large federal investments moving forward from the infrastructure and climate bills that recently passed.”

The following are the five strategic areas for action identified in the roadmap:

• Update policies and guidance related to federal planning, decision-making, cost sharing, risk management processes and benefit-cost analysis to better facilitate nature-based solutions.
• Prioritize nature-based solutions and funding decisions for domestic and international projects, increase and ease access to funding, and catalyze private investment.
• Expand using nature-based solutions in the design, retrofitting and management of federal facilities, lands and waters, including incorporating nature-based solutions more fully into building standards.
• Improve resources and training for a nature-based solutions ready workforce.
• Advance research, innovation and knowledge to incentivize continual learning about how and where nature-based solutions work best, and build needed models and tools for implementation.

A resources guide with nature-based solutions was released alongside the report. The guide includes more than 30 different examples of specific projects and programs that use nature-based solutions, and collated information on over 175 different agency resources, data, tools, training and technical assistance that are available from the federal agencies already.

The administration has already taken several actions that will help accelerate deployment of nature-based solutions, Olander said. “First, there’s a number of large investments, for example, in forest health and fish passages that have come through recent bills that are currently being implemented.”

There are a number of different things we’ve identified that we think partners can do independently or in partnership with federal agencies to support this work, Olander said.

“First is to review the roadmap for relevance to your own programs and your own projects and create your own roadmap for action. Second is to raise awareness of nature-based solutions and potential funding sources for your local and state officials to permitting officials and communities that you work with,” Olander added. “This report lays out the national roadmap for federal action but ultimately, also hopefully, provides entry points for academics, private sector, NGO and other partners in advancing nature-based solutions. We need an all-hands-on deck approach to move at the pace needed.”

Federal agency input

The NOAA and EPA representatives who spoke during the webinar both reiterated that the agencies had been investing in and supporting nature-based solutions for some time and the roadmap reinforces the need for continued investment.

Kim Penn, acting manager for the Communities Program with NOAA, said that the roadmap helps to support and justify some of the directions in which the agency was investing.

The roadmap has been what she called a great opportunity to process and to connect more closely across the federal agencies. The roadmap also allows for NOAA to connect with other agencies working on or investing in similar projects. This ensures that the agency knows they’re coordinated with other agencies moving forward.

Penn said one of the threads that weaves across much of NOAA’s work, and that they believe is a critical component of resilient ecosystems, communities and economies is natural infrastructure. “We believe that nature is essential. We study it, we restore it, we invest in it and have been for decades.”

The agency has been investing in interdisciplinary research, which Penn said is “helping to close the knowledge gaps and better understand nature-based solutions, the services they provide such as carbon sequestration, erosion control or critical habitat, and efficacy of those different approaches to reduce coastal hazards, impacts and build community resilience.”

The roadmap lines up with and builds on NOAA’s current investments in research and education, and directly relates to a lot of the investments that the agency intends to make through federal funding.

Penn said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided nearly $3 billion for NOAA to take action over five years in habitat restoration, coastal resilience and weather forecasting. Of that, almost $1.5 billion will be for natural infrastructure projects that build coastal resilience, restore habitat, create jobs and store carbon. Additionally, There’s habitat protection through the coastal zone management programs at $207 million for five years, and National Estuarine Research, $77 million over five years.

The law’s appropriations to the National Coastal Resilience Fund under the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation will provide additional support for the most vulnerable and historically disadvantaged communities, she added.

Stephanie Santell, senior climate adviser with the Office of Policy in the Office of the Administrator for the EPA, said the agency and many others have been supporting the use of nature-based solutions to protect and restore critical ecosystems, improve water quality and air quality, address climate patterns, and support overall community wellbeing.

In the EPA’s climate adaptation action plan released October of 2021, the agency committed to help advance nature-based solutions. Since the release of the plan, EPA offices have been working together and with other federal partners on actions that can build community resilience and address climate impacts, and that’s including through the application of nature-based solutions, Santell said.

“We’re integrating climate change considerations throughout EPA’s funding and financing programs to encourage projects that increase adaptive capacity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also leveraging a variety of those programs to help invest in natural infrastructure such as supporting state’s innovative use of their state revolving funds or SRF as they’re commonly called, to help communities build resilient water infrastructure and adapt to climate change,” she said. “The SRF support a very wide range of eligible uses and projects including for green infrastructure and nature-based solutions that can serve multiple community goals like building green space and nature-deprived communities, energy efficiency, climate adaptation for impact, drought, wildfire, soil health.”

She said most of the infrastructure law’s water infrastructure funds, about $43 billion, will be distributed to states through SRF capitalization grants.

Across all the agency’s efforts, the EPA is focused on building resilience in communities that are going to be disproportionately impacted by or already experiencing impacts from climate change, she said.

Santell added that she felt it was important to acknowledge that the report was also written for the National Climate Taskforce, and “so there will be outcomes right from the report coming out itself.”

Regional response

Division of Coastal Management officials said in an email response for a request for comment that nature and nature-based projects take advantage of the various benefits that natural resources already provide along the state’s coast, including protection from flooding, storm surge and erosion, while at the same time providing important habitat areas.

“The Division of Coastal Management (DCM) is working to advance these approaches and to build our own capacity to serve communities through the Resilient Coastal Communities Program (RCCP) and other initiatives. DCM’s work in these areas mirrors the Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) Roadmap in several ways: we have worked with partners to develop and provide policy guidance on funding and implementing resilience projects, we are investing in community capacity building, raising awareness of nature based solutions and incentivizing their use, and addressing regulatory uncertainties on topics like thin layer placement and wetland restoration,” officials said.

“DCM appreciates the federal leadership on coastal resilience and adaptation that is benefitting our state and coastal communities, including both technical assistance like the NBS Roadmap and financial assistance through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. The federal programs align very well with State leadership and investments planning and implementation, and we’re working very hard to be good stewards of these critical resources.”

North Carolina Coastal Federation Deputy Director Lauren Kolodij told Coastal Review she thinks it’s promising to see that the roadmap calls for expanding the use of nature-based solutions at the federal level. 

She added that efforts have been taking place in the state in recent years to promote nature-based solutions.

“In 2021, the Action Plan for Nature-Based Stormwater Strategies was developed by the North Carolina Coastal Federation with the support of The Pew Charitable Trusts, and input of four expert workgroups focusing on opportunities to advance the use of nature-based stormwater strategies across North Carolina in new development, stormwater retrofits, roadways and working lands,” she explained.

More recently, she added, with the July 2022 Executive Order 266, Gov. Roy Cooper is calling for an update to the state’s Uniform Floodplain Management Policy. According to the order, the policy is supposed to address considerations for including nature-based infrastructure to reduce flood risk.

The federal endorsement of nature-based solutions will complement these efforts in North Carolina.

“These federal advancements coupled with current actions in North Carolina could position nature-based strategies to become more standard practice. This is great news considering the fact that these strategies are proven and cost-effective tools for resiliency,” Kolodij added.

This article has been updated.

Efforts are in the works by state and federal agencies to help the aquaculture industry survive the effects of climate change.

“Most of us know that climate change impacts are happening now and that they will continue to get worse in North Carolina. We’re experiencing more intense storms, greater rainfall and rising sea levels,” North Carolina Sea Grant Coastal Resilience Specialist Sarah Spiegler said during a recent webinar.

The webinar on the state of climate resilience in North Carolina aquaculture was held Sept. 28 as part of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Aquaculture’s National Aquaculture Week.

As sea levels rise, elevation of the water table continues to increase and other processes are affected such as erosion, inundation, groundwater systems and water quality, she said. Adding that the shellfish aquaculture industry in North Carolina is also impacted by climate change.

“Our coastal ecosystems are vulnerable to more frequent and intense storms, degraded water quality, variable salinity and dissolved oxygen levels, higher water temperatures and increased inundation. This impacts suitability for harvest, mortality rates, public health risk, disruption of shellfish markets and time and money to repair and recover from storms,” she said.

Sea Grant Coastal Aquaculture Specialist Eric Herbst reiterated during the webinar that storm severity is increasing and explained how climate change impacts lease site suitability, temporary closures, mass mortality events and public health risks.

While the state has been experiencing coastal storms since time immemorial, one thing that can’t be denied and one thing that is happening is air and water temperatures are rising, he said. “We’ve had the wettest five-consecutive-year interval on record in the last 10 years. Our sea level is rising. And we also have had extreme precipitation events greater than 3 inches of rainfall occurring in 24 hours within the last decade as well. The severity of the weather, the frequency, the duration, all appear to be increasing here in North Carolina.”

Sea level rise will likely reduce the amount of time a farmer can work their lease, especially without a workboat, and cause variable salinity, higher temperatures and lower dissolved oxygen that can inhibit growth and increase mortalities. Going forward, sea level rise and decreased water quality may cause some existing sites to be unsuitable for shellfish aquaculture.

In terms of adaptation, Herbst continued, shellfish farmers are already experiencing climate change issues, and they have been for a while. One of the state’s longtime shellfish farmers has elevated their land-based operations because of storm-related flooding, for example.

Another option is to either relocate or acquire more leases, allowing farmers to move shellfish to different sites based on water quality and time of year. Researchers in the state are in the process of creating stress-tolerant oysters through selective breeding, as well.

Temporary closures are another big issue and are becoming a bigger issue every year, Herbst said. “Some of our growers are closed 100 to 150 days out of the year, and this is due to rainfall events.” These closures create challenges in terms of inventory and asset management, and cash flow issues for those unable to sell their product.

Mass mortality events are another impact from climate change. One Herbst thinks has the possibility to “stop the industry in its tracks.” There’s been an increased frequency, with at least one mass mortality event every year for the last three years. While they don’t know the cause, it seems to correlate with high temperature and salinity. These mass mortality events seem to affect oysters when they’re close to or are large enough to harvest but not young oysters, oyster seeds, or wild oysters, which suggests the wild oysters have adapted. 

Herbst said possible solutions are to acquire additional lease sites in lower-salinity areas to relocate harvest-sized animals in the summer or sell all harvest-sized oysters by the end of spring and start a new crop throughout the summer.

“And then of course we have our silver bullet,” which is a selective breeding program underway to create tolerant oysters.

With human health risks, he said they’re seeing higher temperatures that could result in an increase in the prevalence of pathogenic Vibrio species in North Carolina shellfish.

“We’ve been very lucky so far. We really don’t have any issues with Vibrio and we manage it very simply with time and temperature regulations,” he said. “But with increased temperatures on the way, that might be something that becomes a challenge.”

Same thing with harmful algal blooms, Herbst continued. With changing water quality parameters, higher temperatures, varying or higher salinities, a new species of harmful algal bloom could become more prevalent, and may have a negative effect on human health.

“In the future, we may be required to put together some specific testing infrastructure and capability for Vibrio and for harmful algal blooms. If it gets really bad, we may just require a policy change across the board where we won’t be allowed to sell farmed oysters anymore in the summer,” he said.

Speigler explained that at the state level, after the September 2018 Hurricane Florence, which caused extensive flooding inland and in low-income communities, the state put in place resilience efforts, including Gov. Roy Cooper’s October 2018 Executive Order 80, committing the state to address climate change and transition to a clean energy economy. The order requires all state agencies to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation practices and to develop a climate risk assessment and resilience plan, which was published in 2020.

Another state-level effort to support the aquaculture industry is from the Division of Marine Fisheries.

Division Habitat and Enhancement Section Chief Jacob Boyd said during the webinar that the division was working to provide information and products such as storm-preparation resources, disaster funding, coordination on a state, regional and national scale, and innovative solutions that combine ecological and economic benefits.

“The process of building resilience is complex and requires iterative ways of thinking that includes assessing and planning, responding to the disaster and then recovering by assessing resilience and managing adaptively,” he said.

The industry bounced back after Hurricane Florence in 2018 when the North Carolina General Assembly passed two measures allocating $11.6 million for the commercial fishing industry, which included shellfish aquaculture operations. Improving forecasts and computer systems, expediting information to decision-makers, and providing data and tools for analysis are part of the effort to “build beyond,” he explained.

The division has launched online tools to help shellfish farmers like the 2019 interactive shellfish aquaculture mapping tool to provide information about shellfish leases. Boyd said that as more data are made available for climate change impacts, the tool can be modified to include this information to help growers decide on new shellfish leases.

“The shellfish lease term in North Carolina is 10 years and requires a large investment. Therefore, the more information growers can be provided about the potential location of their shellfish lease, the better decision they can make,” he said.

Another tool that growers can use when choosing new shellfish lease locations, or when determining potential closures for existing shellfish leases, is called ShellCast. This online tool helps shellfish growers anticipate temporary harvest area closures due to excess rainfall and make data driven management decisions.

“Forecast information on temporary closures is helpful because closures impact businesses that go shellfish growers cannot harvest shellfish when a temporary closure is in effect,” Boyd said.

Partnerships with organizations and agencies have provided opportunities to support the aquaculture industry as climate change challenges it.

In 2021, Boyd said the division partnered with NOAA, Sea Grant, National Weather Service and the North Carolina Coastal Federation to bring together the aquaculture community for a workshop. There, shellfish farmers and others in the industry received resources to help prevent aquaculture debris and prepare for storm events. 

Sea Grant and Carteret Community College in Morehead City partnered in 2020 to launch the North Carolina Shellfish Farming Academy, which combines the classroom with field training, and provides information on storm preparation and gear maintenance.

Another effort Boyd mentioned is the State Marine Aquaculture Coordination Network formed last year to improve state marine aquaculture governance for leasing programs from Virginia to Texas. The network is expected to expand nationally in hopes of creating a long-term network of all coastal states.

“Climate change is currently and will continue to impact North Carolina and its shellfish aquaculture industry through increasing extreme precipitation events, increasing annual average temperature and extreme heat days, increasing sea level rise and other impacts such as storm frequency and intensity from climate change. These impacts are and will become even more significant with the continual growth of North Carolina shellfish aquaculture industry,” Boyd said.

“While we have made a lot of progress and incorporating climate resilience best practices in North Carolina shellfish aquaculture industry, there continue to be needs to address and bridges to be built and maintained to create long-term resilience in the industry,” he added.

Climate change is causing hurricane-related flooding to increase — along with the cost to recover from these storms — and communities should prepare now. 

That’s what two researchers recommended during a recent Duke University-hosted media briefing on hurricane preparedness and impacts.  

“The biggest change in storm activity for North Carolina is not the frequency of landfalling hurricanes. It’s not even the intensity of these hurricanes. It’s the rainfall. It’s the amount of water that these storms contain,” said Dr. Megan Mullin of the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment.

Mullin, a professor of environmental politics who researches the politics of climate change, including local political response to climate risks, teamed up for the briefing last week with Dr. Lee Ferguson, an environmental chemist at Duke and one of the lead scientists investigating the Cape Fear’s Gen X contamination.

“Intensity of flooding is our biggest impact from the changes in storm behavior as a result of climate change, and that impact is reaching more broadly and getting more expensive,” Mullin said. “It’s getting more expensive for communities to clean up. It’s getting more expensive for the utilities. It’s getting more expensive for the farmers who will lose an entire year of crops and more expensive for individuals who are experiencing the disruptions.”

Communities are making progress planning for hurricanes, but obstacles remain, Mullin said, like lack of resources and urgency to recover and return to normalcy after a storm.

Ferguson is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering who studies the effects of flooding and the potential for contamination from chemical plants, hog farms and wastewater treatment systems.

He explained that the state has contaminant sources that are active almost all the time, and there are always at least low-level inputs from these sources into waterways.

Gen X is an example of pollution from an industrial source but there are many others, such as per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which have multiple sources — industrial input, military activities and firefighting foam, Ferguson said. There are numerous other sources of contaminants, especially in the coastal plain, such as hog farms, industrial agriculture and municipal wastewater.

While these low-level inputs of contaminants are constant, with hurricane-related flooding, the spread of contamination is amplified. 

Flooding was a major issue during Hurricane Florence in 2018. “It was, I think, the wettest hurricane that we’ve ever had in North Carolina,” Ferguson said.

Under those circumstances, land that would normally not be flooded are completely inundated. The floodwaters move contaminants from those normally dry areas into waterways. For example, if warehouses or industrial properties becomes flooded, that flood water would collect oil or other contaminants from the ground and carry it to waterways. 

Another way pollutants can enter waterways during a flood is from wastewater treatment plants in low-lying areas, which Ferguson said is by design because the downhill flow makes it easier to collect wastewater. 

“That presents a risk when we have flooding events,” because when these wastewater treatment facilities are inundated, there is both a massive amount of wastewater coming to those plants as well as an inundation of the treatment systems, which can lead to discharge. 

Stormwater runoff is another source, although it’s usually relatively low volume and localized. When there’s a large hurricane that affects most of the eastern part of the state, the resulting stormwater runoff carries more contaminants into waterways. 

The time it takes for a waterway to clear up after contamination depends on the level of pollution and the amount of rainfall. For small-scale river flooding, contamination can be cleared in a matter of days but for a storm like Hurricane Florence, when there is large-scale flooding, it can take weeks to months. 

Eastern North Carolina has borne the brunt of many hurricanes, and contamination often flows toward the coast, Ferguson said.

“Certainly, low-lying communities that are along our rivers are at significant risk. One example, during Hurricane Florence we observed really significant flooding around the Trent River, near New Bern, and then also down the Cape Fear River from Fayetteville east to Wilmington.”

The floodwaters not only damaged property but also moved pollution from inundated areas into major waterways, and eventually into the ocean. 

Problems can manifest in any community affected by floodwaters, but small communities along waterways are especially at risk, he said.

Ferguson added that the increased population on the coast presents major challenges, because, as coastlines are urbanized, resilience of the natural systems that act as buffers is reduced. Barrier Islands that are bulkheaded, for example, are less effective because they block the natural transport of sand. Maritime forests that can help serve as a buffer for both contamination as well as storm surge and wind energy are often lost with urbanization. 

In many low-lying communities, Mullin said, flooding is part of the history, but now flooding has become more dangerous. It’s deeper, it’s longer lasting and it’s carrying contaminants to a greater degree and in higher concentrations.

On the immediate coast, the destruction of structures leaves debris that communities must remove because it can hurt the tourism-dependent economy, Mullin said. “You can’t have people coming to your beach and expect to walk barefoot on the beach when there’s rusty nails right on the beach. And this is becoming a real challenge for the oceanfront communities.”

Ferguson said that Hurricane Fran in the mid-1990s was a wake-up call not only in North Carolina but nationwide about the potential for large-scale agriculture to be a source of pollution — specifically, hog waste. 

“Certainly, there’s a lot more attention paid in the scientific as well as the regulatory community to this issue since 1996,” Ferguson said. 

Large hog farms and other industrial agriculture practices can create other concerns during floods, such as the potential for pathogens in downstream waters. Also, the biological and chemical oxygen demand that comes when a huge amount of organic matter is released into waterways can result in bacteria and algal blooms that then cause fish kills and other problems. The pollution can also include antibiotics, hormones and other additives administered to farm animals, he explained.

Contaminant-laden inundation resulting from Hurricane Florence was not on a scale of that seen from Hurricane Fran. Ferguson said his limited research indicates that farmers’ practices had since become more resilient. He said farmers appeared to have added protections ahead of the storm, such as moving animals to higher ground and relocating waste lagoons.

Mullin said there was a policy response after Hurricane Fran, including a moratorium on new hog waste lagoons and funding for buyouts. While many of the lagoons most at risk of catastrophic failure had been mitigated by the time of Florence, there are still old lagoons at risk.

Smaller towns often lack the financial and organizational capacity to properly address their hurricane-related problems.

Mullin explained that during her work with coastal officials and residents, they often talk about taking different paths, such as using living shorelines instead of bulkheads for protecting land and properties from the water, or changing their septic standards to not only deal with severe storms, but also increasingly chronic flooding resulting from sea level rise. 

“They want to think creatively about infrastructure decisions, such as making sewage systems and drinking water systems more resilient to withstand future storms, but when the storm hits, those plans and those creative ideas tend to go out the window because they really just want to get the road back in order to be able to access essential services,” she said. 

It’s a challenge to do the critical work of recovery in a way that also carves out a new future.

Doing things differently slows recovery down, Mullin said. “We rebuild in ways that lock in the old ways of doing things, which continue to be not resilient.” 

Ferguson noted that while recovery is expensive and difficult, the more work toward resilience that a community can do, the better. 

“While we certainly need to be able to recover from major storm events and the contamination that goes along with it,” he said. A better way to solve this problem is to build infrastructure, especially water and wastewater infrastructure, in a resilient way to withstand the climate-induced extreme weather and reduce the risk of major contamination during flooding.

“We need to be thinking about advanced treatment systems that can protect us not only against the contaminants that we know are there now, but the contaminants we might anticipate from future flooding events and future contamination,” he said.

Mullin added that the decisions on the future of a community need to be made in a just and equitable way.

Towns that use relief money to protect expensive homes on well-developed roads rather than helping residents in lower-value homes where there is poor infrastructure is an example of injustice, she said. 

Ferguson and Mullin agreed that the state has a long way to go to get ready for the next big storm.

“It’s very difficult to be ready for something that we just can’t necessarily really anticipate the scope for, but I do think that we can move in the right direction by increasing again the resilience of some of our infrastructure,” Ferguson said. 

Mullin said her top priority would be to pay for infrastructure improvement as part of recovery for the communities that are least able to do it themselves. When relief funds distributed after a storm, the money should be distributed most equitably, not most easily.

The effects of high overnight temperatures, especially on vulnerable populations, concern heat and climate experts Dr. Ashley Ward and Dr. Luke Parsons as much as the hot and muggy summer days.

“While extreme heat in the form of daily temperatures is very serious, what we’re increasingly seeing is a strong connection between poor health outcomes and persistently high overnight temperatures, particularly when those overnight temperatures remain at 75 degrees or above,” Ward said during a media conference Thursday on “Preparing for the Next Heat Wave” hosted by Duke University.

Ward, the senior policy associate at the newly rebranded Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, has focused on helping communities develop long-term sustainable solutions. Parsons, a research scientist and lecturer in the division of Earth and climate sciences in Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, studies the effect of climate and air pollution on human health and well-being. 

Parsons said for him, heat exposure is a health-equity issue. He noted that he was sitting comfortably in his climate-controlled home but not everyone has that luxury. Many people who are the most vulnerable to heat exposure don’t have access to air conditioning. “The average middle- to upper-class person with more income in North Carolina has probably more air conditioning access than a lower income person.”

Ward explained that the high overnight temperatures mean those who don’t have air conditioning, can’t afford to run their air conditioner or live in housing that’s less energy-efficient are particularly vulnerable, especially if they have health conditions or take prescription medications that impede their body’s ability to process heat.

“When overnight temperatures remain high, what we’re seeing is the body doesn’t have a chance to recover from any heat exposure during the day, which starts to trigger a cascading set of events that results in heat-related illness, heat stroke, usually over a matter of days sometimes,” she said. This means in order to address the increasing risks from heat, “we need to think about structural changes not just are individuals doing their part. We need to create environments that mitigate that risk above and beyond what individuals can do and this is where community approaches are effective.”

The many who must work outside, such as agricultural and construction workers, are another group exposed to extreme humidity and heat – people who can’t go inside and cool down in the air conditioning, Parsons added.

Because these workers are unable to cool off, they’re losing hours of work because they have to slow their pace or take breaks. Parsons said between 50 and 100 hours, or roughly a week or two, of labor loss occurs each year with $20-$100 billion in labor productivity losses. 

“As the globe warms, and heat waves get hotter and more frequent, it gets hotter and more humid outside for these workers, and it gets harder and harder for them to safely and efficiently conduct their work,” he said. “They’re really impacted during heat waves or just in general when it’s hot and humid during working hours during daylight.”

Heat exposure costs the public in emergency department visits, as well. Ward said that in the 2010s the National Institutes of Health conducted a study on emergency department visits for heat-related illness. Based on those estimates and the number of emergency department visits in the state during the heat, mainly by men aged 15 to 45, it costs residents around $20 million a year.

She added that through previous research with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it was clear that people were going to the emergency department for heat-related illnesses even when temperatures were lower than when the National Weather Service issues heat advisories and warnings. 

Ward’s hypothesis is that because when it gets 100 degrees, for example, people actually do take precautions. It’s at the slightly lower temperatures, below 96 or 97, when people are not quite as cautious and that leads to some of the worst health outcomes. “So there isn’t always an alignment with where the health risk lies and where the National Weather Service warnings are.”

She noted that in North Carolina, heat-related illness rates are much higher in rural areas than they are in urban areas for a variety of reasons, and she said that this pattern would probably be fairly consistent across a large swath of the Southeast. 

Ward said all evidence points to increasing global temperatures, “and what we’re experiencing now is likely our new normal and, frankly, it probably will get worse. Given this, we need to adapt to this new reality by doing things like increasing tree canopy in urban spaces, making changes to our building codes that require energy efficient buildings for this new normal and the new normal that’s projected over the 30- to 50-year time frame.” 

Ward said we also need to support policies that help people increase the energy efficiency in their homes, increase protections for occupational heat exposure, and train doctors, midwives and nurses about the increased risk from high heat for their pregnant patients.

But, both researchers said we shouldn’t give up on preventing heat waves and trying to find ways to adapt, but climate change-related extreme heat should be studied year-round.

Parsons said that if we try to limit global warming to about 2 degrees, relative to continuing with business as usual of our higher greenhouse gas emissions, around 300 million lost workdays per year in the U.S. alone could be prevented. That’s if we work worldwide to limit global warming.

“That being said, we need to adapt too, because in the meanwhile, until we bend that global warming curve to slow it down, we’re going to continue to see temperatures like we’ve seen are all around the globe this summer maybe won’t happen every year, but we’ll see these types of things with increasing frequency. We need to help protect communities that can’t protect themselves right now and encourage people to adapt to the warming that we’re living,” he said.

The state has awarded a total of $1.14 million to five coastal counties and 17 municipalities to engineer and design projects to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

The funds announced last week are for the third of the four-phase North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, administered by the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, announced in November 2020.

The North Carolina General Assembly and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation fund the program that helps local governments identify, plan and implement strategies that reduce the risks from rising seas, stronger storms and increased rain intensity and volume. 

“The Division of Coastal Management is grateful to be able to provide funding and tools that support coastal communities with planning and actions that make them more resilient to increasingly intense natural hazards,” Mackenzie Todd, coastal resilience specialist with the division, told Coastal Review. “These funds will advance projects that the communities have identified as their priorities, and that work with our environment to defend against the impacts of severe weather.”

Projects were prioritized through community engagement and vulnerability assessments conducted in Phase 1 and project planning during Phase 2, according to a DEQ. Funding was announced in March 2021 for the two phases that ran concurrently under a single contract for each community.

Phase 3 funds engineering and design work of the prioritized project local and county governments selected in their resilience strategy or other existing plans that met criteria. There is also assistance available for some communities to develop or amend ordinances that improve their resilience to coastal hazards and manage stormwater and flooding. Phase 4, which has yet to be awarded, will support implementation of the work.

Beaufort, Bertie, Craven, Dare and Hyde counties received funding as well as the towns of Aurora, Beaufort, Belhaven, Cape Carteret, Duck, Hertford, Leland, Nags Head, New Bern, Pine Knoll Shores, Sunset Beach, Swansboro, Vandemere, Washington, and the Topsail Island towns of Surf City, Topsail Beach and North Topsail Beach.

Washington’s resilience strategy

Located on the northern bank of Pamlico River in Beaufort County, the city of Washington has been part of the program from the start.

Jamie Heath, planner with the Mid-East Commission Council of Governments based in Washington, told Coastal Review that the city, which had a population of 9,555 in 2020, received $30,000 for Phases 1 and 2 and had contracted the commission and RK&K Civil Engineering of Raleigh to work on the program, a requirement to apply for Phase 3.

Using this money, the city formed a Community Action Team made up of public, private and nonprofit members that worked with the Mid-East Commission and engineers on the first two phases from fall 2021 until this past spring. There was public input throughout the process including a public survey, an in-person public open house, and a virtual public open house, Heath said.

The city’s resilience strategy was developed as a result of phases 1 and 2. Included in the strategy is a priority project portfolio of resilience projects for the city, with six total priority projects, pared down from 41 possible projects.

After successfully completing the first two phases, the city was eligible to apply for Phase 3, she said. The city received $61,480 for the planning and design phase of Jack’s Creek floodplain and greenway Improvements.

The Jack’s Creek watershed drains most of downtown Washington and discharges to the Tar-Pamlico River, she said. The Jack’s Creek streambed runs directly through central Washington and is visible as it passes through and between public parks, under bridges and near neighborhood streets, all of which have views of the stream, Heath said. There is currently a milelong greenway running along the portion of Jack’s Creek adjacent to downtown Washington.

“The purpose of the project is to improve Jack’s Creek floodplain and greenway to increase stormwater capacity and decrease overbank flooding. This could include intentional inundation, bioretention ponds, and/or an automated stormwater system while also restoring the recreational area around the creek,” Heath said. “The engineering and design work will determine the most appropriate flooding solutions and create a design for those identified solutions.”

Once Phase 3 is successfully completed, the city will be eligible to apply for Phase 4, — the implementation phase, she said.

The project complements current projects in the Jack’s Creek watershed, including drainage improvements in the northern section of the creek, a stormwater mapping project funded with a federal Clean Water Act Section 205(j) water quality grant, and the nine-element watershed restoration plan Jack’s Creek funded by a state Land and Water Management Fund grant and currently being developed by Sound Rivers in partnership with the city and other project partners.

Outer Banks projects

On the Outer Banks, funds were awarded to two Dare County communities to reduce vulnerability of community assets or populations, one of the program’s goals.

On Hatteras Island, the county plans stormwater improvements at two locations off N.C. 12, mostly within the state Department of Transportation right-of-way, according to county grants administrator Barton Grover. Although the details are still being worked on, Grover said that the county anticipates building bioretention areas and/or stormwater wetlands. The $45,000 grant for Phase 3 will be used to contract with an engineer, who would likely start the project sometime this fall, he said.

Similarly, Duck had prioritized flooding issues, for which it was awarded $45,000, with the town matching another $45,000, said Sandy Cross, Duck senior planner. The town plans to use the grant money to develop a neighborhood stormwater study, she said.

Central coast

In Carteret County, Beaufort has been awarded $75,000 through the program for Phase 3, Rachel Johnson, public information officer, said. The award will go to completing the engineering and design work for town ordinance updates for enhanced community resilience.

Beaufort Mayor Sharon Harker told Coastal Review that town officials were excited about the work. “The grant funding will help Beaufort work toward being more resilient and to make a positive impact for generations to come,” she said.

The waterfront town of Swansboro in Onslow County has also been engaged in the program since its inception.

Town Manager Paula Webb said the town, which received funding for Phases 1 and 2, had also applied for Phase 3 funding. The town was awarded $45,000 for rehabilitation of Water Street, a downtown street prone to flooding. Bioretention swales are to be designed for Broad Street between Elm and Water streets, which are also prone to flooding. Phase 4, if awarded, is to go toward implementation.

Farther south, the three towns on Topsail Island – Surf City, Topsail Beach and North Topsail Beach – were awarded a total of $135,000 for the design of roadside infiltration basins to address identified areas within all three towns, Kyle Breuer, Surf City manager, explained.

Related: Surf City to use catch basins to address NC 50 flooding

“We’re thrilled to be able to continue moving both the Town and Topsail Island forward through these resilience efforts,” Breuer said in an email response. “Phase III of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program will address the engineering and design of the top priority project identified in our Resilience Portfolio, which is to establish roadside infiltration in areas that experience frequent flooding through storm events.”

Breuer said that the application process had been a joint effort between Topsail Beach, Surf City and North Topsail Beach.

“We collectively worked together under the leadership and direction of the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission and citizen appointments from all three towns, collectively known as the Citizen Advisory Team,” he explained. “This laid the groundwork for understanding the Island’s vulnerability as well as the ability to think holistically about what are projects that can be replicated in any of the three jurisdictions.”

Leland’s nature-based plan

Engineering Technician II Adrianna Weber for Leland explained in an email response that during Phases 1 and 2, the Brunswick County town’s critical assets and infrastructure were analyzed through a risk and vulnerability assessment. This led to a project portfolio identifying projects that would increase Leland’s resiliency.

For these phases, Division of Coastal Management contracted with Moffat & Nichol, an engineering firm based in Raleigh. The town did not receive direct funding in these phases.

Weber said that after Phases 1 and 2 were complete, Leland applied for Phase 3 and received $20,000. The funds will be used for surveying and design services for Mallory Creek Drive drainage improvements, a priority project identified in Phase 1 and 2 of the program.

“This funding will provide a drainage plan of a portion of Mallory Creek Drive that frequently floods,” she said. This drainage plan will provide a nature-based solution.

“These improvements are crucial to our area as Leland is susceptible to heavy precipitation events, erosion, and flooding. Mallory Creek Drive is a high-traffic route for many residents and visitors of Leland, as it connects several large neighborhoods with U.S. 17 and N.C. 133,” Weber said. “Therefore, this funding will help alleviate flooding, reduce health and safety risks, and enhance the environmental appeal of the community.”

The town hopes to apply for Phase 4 funding to implement the improvements.

“We are excited to continue our work with the Resilient Coastal Communities Program,” she said.

WILMINGTON – Heat records have broken across Europe and the U.K., claiming hundreds of lives. Forests in burn-scarred areas of California may not recover because of the severity of wildfires in that state. Cities from the northeastern United States to the west coast are opening cooling centers as a reprieve from heat wave after heat wave sweeping the country.

These are a sampling of extreme weather-related events headlining the news this week.

On Tuesday, the day the United Kingdom broke its highest temperature on record, about 150 people gathered in Wilmington to discuss an alternative energy source that would stop the addition of carbon dioxide, a culprit of global warming, emitted into the atmosphere from more traditional power production.

One theme that emerged at the North Carolina Offshore Wind and Wildlife Solutions Summit is that the impacts of wind energy development off the coast will be a tradeoff to the impacts of climate change.

During the daylong summit, panelists, including scientists, environmental advocates and a commercial fisherman, talked about the need for studies specific to the East Coast and North Carolina to understand how the construction and subsequent operation of hundreds of wind turbines will impact fish, marine mammals, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, birds and bats.

Panelists talked about the rich and widely diverse species that live below and above the ocean’s surface off the North Carolina coast.

Research on how those species may be affected would help frame how to mitigate impacts throughout construction and into operations, including things like lighting installed on the turbines, how cables are placed along or under the ocean floor and the speed at which turbine propellers turn.

“It’s important as we think about the impacts or the effects of wind on wildlife to think about them in two different ways,” said Curtis Smalling, Audubon North Carolina’s director of conservation. “What is the effect? What is the impact of that? Are we losing habitat?”

What are the cumulative effects of thousands of wind turbines towering out of the Atlantic off the U.S. eastern seaboard if all of the wind energy areas, or WEAs, are eventually developed, he asked.

“All of those things play into this,” he said. “Different species use these habitats in different ways at different times. We want responsibly sited (wind farms) when the debate now is what does that mean exactly.”

The National Audubon Society’s 2019 climate report found that two-thirds of America’s birds are threatened with extinction from climate change. The report states that the outcome for 76% of those birds will be different if the rise in global temperature is limited.

North Carolina is currently the southernmost state on the East Coast tapped for offshore wind development.

The Kitty Hawk WEA and Wilmington East WEA are under lease. These areas have the combined potential to generate upwards of 4 gigawatts of power, the equivalent output of four nuclear power plants.

Existing studies on the impacts of offshore wind farms to wildlife are primarily out of Europe, which has been utilizing the technology since the early 1990s.

Duke University is part of a collaboration of researchers working on a comprehensive evaluation of the potential effects of offshore wind development along the East Coast on marine life.

The collaboration, known as Wildlife and Offshore Wind, or WOW, aims to “provide a long-term, adaptive roadmap for efficient and effective assessment of the potential effects of offshore wind on marine life, from siting through operation,” according to its website.

Patrick Halpin, a professor at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, is one of the lead investigators on the research project.

He said that while there are many lessons to be learned from Europe, none include the impacts of offshore wind operations to large, migratory whales.

The coast of North Carolina is an important part of the distribution of North Atlantic right whales, said Bill McLellan, an expert in marine mammal stranding and co-lead of the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Marine Mammal Stranding Program.

The North Atlantic right whale population is down to 336 individuals, he said. There are now a known 80 reproductive females within that population.

“We know the numbers are precise and we know the population is in decline,” McLellan said.

North Atlantic right whales are experiencing an increase in motion noise and there has been a spike in the number of vessel strikes in the whale’s critical habitat, which runs from Florida to North Carolina, he said.

There is concern about how whales may be affected during construction of offshore wind areas and how they will behave around operating wind fields.

“I think right whales could be using those areas,” McLellan said. “There’s a potential that these right whales could find these wind fields fabulous.”

But, he said there’s also the potential the whales will not like the noise wind fields generate.

Habitat altered by the placement of wind turbines and the possible effects to benthic-feeding fish also need additional studies, experts say.

There are areas within both the Kitty Hawk and Wilmington East WEAs crucial to commercial and recreational fishermen.

Scott Baker, a fisheries specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant, said that North Carolina is second only to Florida in the number of for-hire and recreational fisheries.

Where North Carolina shines, he said, is in the diversity of fish found off its coast thanks to its location.

Cape Point, an offshore area around Cape Hatteras, is where two major North American currents come together.

Here the warm waters from the Gulf Stream meet the cool waters from the Labrador Current, an area populated with bigeye tuna, yellowfin tuna and swordfish.

Cape Point is within the Kitty Hawk WEA.

Commercial fisherman Dewey Hemilright is a fisheries representative of the Kitty Hawk WEA. He said he thinks the lack of information about the impacts to fish is, “going to hurt us.”

“What we all want to have is more information,” said Roger Shew, senior lecturer in geology at UNCW. “There’s your nature-based system that we really need to be considering.”

Targeting species, looking at the declining species, those that might be threatened, and examining commercial and recreational fisheries will be valuable information to gather, he said.

Audubon North Carolina, National Wildlife Federation, North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, Sierra Club North Carolina, and the Southern Environmental Law Center hosted the summit.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to address climate change will not stop North Carolina’s law that requires power-generating facilities to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

But the highest court’s ruling has broader national implications that will be felt most certainly in the Tar Heel State, environmental law experts say.

In a 6 to 3 ruling last month in the case of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court found Congress did not give the agency authority to cap carbon dioxide, or CO2, emissions to the point that it would force electric utilities to shut down coal-fired power plants and move to renewable energy alternatives, including wind and solar.

The authority that the ruling stripped from EPA was granted to the North Carolina Utilities Commission last year under House Bill 951.

The measure, which Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law in October 2021, requires the North Carolina Utilities Commission “take all reasonable steps” to reduce CO2 emissions emitted in the state from electricity-generating facilities owned or operated by electric public utilities from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

The law allows the commission, at a minimum, to consider power generation, transmission distribution, grid modernization, storage energy efficiency measures and technology breakthroughs to achieve compliance.

The legislation gives the commission a wide variety of ways to achieve emissions reductions, explained Ryke Longest, clinical professor of law at Duke University School of Law and co-director of the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic.

“That section of that bill is doing a lot of work that was objected to by the majority of the Supreme Court opinion of West Virginia versus EPA,” he said. “That includes things like moving from coal fire to solar and saying that you’re going to have to retire some coal plants and you’re going to have to increase solar. That’s all authorized under this law.”

The commission has until Dec. 31 to develop a plan to achieve those CO2-reduction goals.

Don Hornstein, law professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Law in Chapel Hill, responded in an email saying the Supreme Court’s decision does not affect the EPA’s ability to continue regulating coal- and gas-fired power plant emissions of conventional pollutants.

“These power plants are incredibly dirty, forgetting about GHG (greenhouse gases) altogether,” he wrote.

Hornstein referenced the 2006 public nuisance lawsuit then-N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper brought against the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, which owned coal-fired power plants in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama.

Cooper filed the lawsuit after EPA denied the state’s petition to use the Clean Air Act to force the utility to reduce its air pollution.

A federal judge in North Carolina in 2009 ruled that emissions from three of TVA’s plants in Tennessee and one in Alabama were public nuisances. TVA appealed, and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit.

North Carolina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the appellate court’s decision, but withdrew the petition for review after TVA agreed to settlement with the EPA in 2011.

The settlement required the company to invest in pollution controls at 11 of its coal-fired plants and $350 million in clean energy and efficiency projects.

“Although that lawsuit was based largely on nuisance law, EPA has huge amounts of power to continue to regulate fossil-fuel plants’ emission of mercury, particulates, other ‘criteria’ and toxic emissions and my understanding is that EPA is already well along that path of forcing such power plants to comply with the existing law, all of which will only increase the price of power from such plants and amplify the cost savings that come from a utility’s switch to solar, wind, and possibly other non-GHG sources of electricity,” Hornstein said. “There’s also nothing in the Court’s opinion that impedes more and more North Carolinians taking a second look at rooftop solar themselves, a round of second-looks that recent changes in NC law has only underscored.”

But the North Carolina law, in Longest’s view, falls short because it does not take into account environmental justice, particularly when it comes to the public participation process.

“The process itself needs to be inclusive and intentionally inclusive and the process the utilities commission uses is none of those things,” he said. “It’s a secure docket that you have to register with the state to have the opportunity to participate on. The orders are written in fairly complicated legalese. You basically have to be a lawyer with some expertise in utilities law even to be able to understand what’s going on, and so I think there is a problem from an environmental justice standpoint, which is that the process itself is not in line with environmental justice in mind.”

In a Jan. 24 letter to the North Carolina Department of Administration, Longest and William Barber, III, a board member of the Department of Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board and director of climate and environmental justice at The Climate Reality Project, noted that 17 people had signed up to the docket since it was opened in October 2021.

Those who signed up were either state officials, electricity producers or large industrial users, according to the letter.

“It is absurd and circular logic to solicit people’s feedback about involvement using a subscription-based docket mechanism,” the letter states. “The only folks who got notice of this request for feedback about the process were those few who were already subscribed.”

Longest said he does not believe the letter has had much of an impact in the process.

Whatever plan the Utilities Commission devises to reach the state’s carbon emission reductions goal, the state cannot avoid the effects of climate change on a broader scale.

Hornstein concluded his email stating that, for North Carolina, “at the coast especially, on the front lines of climate change, our continued vulnerability to unprecedented rainfall storms, hurricanes, sea-level rise, will remain, after West Va v. EPA, only as good as the GHG-reduction efforts of OTHER states, no matter how successful we are within our own borders at GHG reductions. That is the real handicap that West Va v EPA imposed on everyone.”

Where there were once sizable coastal woodlands flanking shorelines and estuaries, lifeless trees now dot the barren landscape.

Saltwater intrusion is killing the freshwater-dependent forests, leaving behind what looks like a desperate scene from a big-budget, post-apocalyptic summer blockbuster. But this is not a movie set. These are signs of climate change.

“A ghost forest is a stand of dead trees. It’s evidence of a mass mortality event,” said Dr. Emily Bernhardt, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor in the biology department at Duke University. “The phrase has been applied to other causes of mass forest mortality like drought and bark beetle infestations, but is most prominently used for the loss of coastal trees due to rising water levels and soil salinization.”

Bernhardt, an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist, was the guest speaker June 3 for the virtual Cary Science Conversation “Saltwater Intrusion, Sea Level Rise, and the Spread of Ghost Forests,” hosted by New York-based Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.

Bernhardt and her colleagues have been monitoring the transformation of North Carolina’s Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula for nearly 20 years. An area with large-scale agriculture, salt water intrusion from sea level rise has been made worse by irrigation infrastructure. Increasing salinity is transforming forested wetlands into salt marsh, reducing carbon storage and crop productivity, and degrading freshwater resources, according to a release from Cary Institute.

Speaking before a screening of the short film “The Seeds of Ghost Forests,” produced by Luke Groski of public radio’s Science Friday, Bernhardt said that ghost forests are becoming increasingly prevalent features in North America’s coastal plains.

“One of the most important points I like to make when I talk about climate change on the coastal plain is that it’s not something that we need to talk about happening in the future. We don’t have to wait. We are already facing really rapid climate change induced shifts in our ecosystems,” she said.

Living on the edge

While a lot of the focus on the coastal changes is on the wealthy fringe, where the people have big houses, Bernhardt said the National Science Foundation is funding a research coordination network to focus on the much poorer, less empowered communities living in rural landscapes.

The Saltwater Intrusion and Sea Level Rise Coordination Network, which is still in its early stages, is pulling together researchers to study the problem of rural coastal climate change by linking environmental and social sciences.

“We’re looking at forests – and it’s because we can see them from space – but the same places where we’re seeing forest loss, we’re seeing loss of agricultural productivity, wholescale loss of agricultural fields to salinization, threats to drinking water supplies,” she said.

With the new network, Bernhardt hopes to help amplify the voices and the stories of why it matters to “keep these kinds of communities of plants and animals and people existing and healthy.”

“A lot of the places which are really vulnerable to rapid climate change on the coast also happen to be places where the people who live there are already living on the edge, and so this is going to be something that’s a real threat,” she said. “There’s an enormous environmental justice component to this story as well, that is going to be an important part of our work moving forward.”

She said certain landscapes are more likely to be vulnerable to hurricane or drought and salination. These types of landscapes often overlap with populations that have higher poverty levels.

“I think part of what we need to do as scientists is make sure we expand that conversation to include the people whose voices really should be heard, instead of ours,” she said.

“Canary in the coal mine”

Ghost forests are a concern, Bernhardt told Coastal Review during a follow-up interview, because they are a “canary in the coal mine” for all sorts of other subtle environmental changes along the coast. Only a few plants, and only one kind of woody plant — mangroves — can survive in saltwater.

“The ghost forests are obvious even from space, but in the same areas, landowners are reporting the salinization and flooding of agricultural fields – conditions which make it impossible to sustain crop yields,” she said.

As sea levels have risen and fallen over geologic time, the bands of salt marshes, freshwater marshes and freshwater forested wetlands have gradually migrated inland and seaward, Bernhardt explained.

The issue now is that the rate of sea level rise and the magnitude of droughts and hurricanes that contribute to salinization are increasing, and there is no way for many of these forested wetlands to migrate to higher ground. That’s because higher ground is being used for agriculture and lawns.

“We are losing this really special kind of ecosystem, the cypress and gum swamps that are home to so much wildlife and which sequester so much carbon, more than two times that found in a salt marsh,” she said.

The entire East Coast and Gulf Coast are subjected to significant disturbances from storm events that can push saltwater inland. It takes more than a year for rain to rinse the salt pushed inland, she explained during the presentation.

Increasingly severe or long-duration droughts are adding to saltwater intrusion as well. Drought in a flat landscape is another way that saltwater can move upland, inland or landward.

“We had such a drought on the coast of North Carolina between 2007 and 2012, punctuated by Hurricane Irene,” she said. “Three years of drought with a hurricane in between, that’s a pretty tough time to live as a tree.”

Bernhardt explained that many who live on the coastal plain in North Carolina don’t want to talk about climate change, but they are perfectly happy to talk to researchers about field flooding and salinization of their fields.

“It’s a big problem. It’s widely acknowledged. Everybody either has it happening on their land or know someone who is,” she said.

In some areas, farmers are starting to grow more salt-tolerant crops, a form of adaptation.

“In the coastal plain of North Carolina, we’re seeing less of that,” she said, attributing that to the high number of the farms owned by multinational companies and rented to individual farmers who operate in small areas.

“I think that’s an interesting difference regionally, but you’ve got sort of different farming communities facing this problem and the amount of economic or socioeconomic power they have to make change for protected fields really varies and that’s one thing we’re going to be spending a lot of time thinking about with our new research-coordinating network,” she said.

Wetlands provide important protections for coastal residents, their homes and their livelihoods from storm surges and saltwater intrusion. But this buffer is vulnerable.

“I think if we don’t do anything intelligent here, we just keep letting this happen, we’re going to lose our coastal wetlands. We’re going to salinize huge areas of agricultural land so that they are no longer viable for that livelihood,” she said.

The salts will deplete nutrients in farm fields and cause massive problems for coastal fisheries and water quality.

Bernhardt and her team worked on a restoration project to convert farmland to forested wetland just east of Columbia in Tyrrell County. The land, at least 3 miles from the nearest coastline, was drained when it was used for agriculture.

As part of the restoration project, the drainage pump station was removed, and “we started to see during these periods of drought, brackish water entering this restoration wetland. A lot of trees that were planted as part of this restoration project died as a result of the drought and salinization,” Bernhardt said.

Part of what makes the coastal plain of North Carolina, and many other flat landscapes, vulnerable to saltwater intrusion is all the connected ditches and canals. “As people — either because of restoration or because of farm abandonment — stop actively maintaining this drainage, it becomes a route for salts to move upland,” Bernhardt said.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

Growing nutritious food almost seems like magic. You plant a seed in the soil, add water and sun and food with the potential to sustain life grows. 

But only if the soil has nutrients to support that life. Depleted soils lead to nutrient-deficient foods and yield less produce than healthy soils. 

This is an important point to consider as nearly 11% of U.S. households are food insecure, or lack consistent access to adequate quantities of nutritious food, according to a 2020 USDA report. Additionally, Feeding America estimates that one in five children in North Carolina face hunger. 

While many factors contribute to food insecurity such as affordability and access to nutritious food, degraded soils threaten to exacerbate the global food crisis. In 2020, between 720 to 811 million people went hungry, according to a report by the United Nations.  

Soil degradation happens when land is stripped of trees and other vegetation, leaving the soil exposed to the elements – heat, wind, rain. Over time, the soil will dry out, leach nutrients, and erode. This will also lead to a loss of carbon dioxide sequestration, which is the process by which trees remove CO2 from the air and store it in the soil through photosynthesis.

As summer and hurricane season start and experts forecast higher temperatures over the Southeast with more intense storms, maintaining the quality of soils will be a fundamental task for North Carolinians to keep their crops healthy and health-producing. 

That means paying attention to what’s in the state’s soils. 

Garbage in, garbage out

While increased amounts of atmospheric CO2 could be beneficial to certain plants such as sugar cane and Bermuda grass, it threatens to reduce the yields of many of the agricultural staples grown in North Carolina such as soybeans, corn and sweet potatoes, according to Bob Patterson, a crop sciences professor in N.C. State University’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences.

“If (certain crops are) growing in an environment where the temperature is high at night, and some of the precious carbon that was fixed photosynthetically in the daytime is lost from the crop(s) at night (due to respiration), it is not available for yield and quality purposes,” Patterson said.

Degraded soils can occur due to unsustainable agricultural practices, even without the impact of climate change, but climate change can accelerate soil decline, according to a 2019 special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“The greater the amount of organic matter in the soil, the more likely that soil will be healthy in ways that increase or, maintain as fully as possible, that fraction of the total water in the soil that is plant available,” Patterson said. 

Nutrient-poor soils can be improved by adding organics, which promote an environment where microorganisms such as earthworms can thrive. Earthworms improve soil drainage by burrowing down in the subsoil, which creates pockets for moisture and air to flow. They also feed on organic material such as leaves and grass clippings, for instance, and produce nutrient-rich waste that is readily available to crops. 

Improving soil health is the one thing that is within a farmer’s control to mitigate the potential effects of climate change on food production.

The North Carolina Climate Risk and Resilience Plan, produced by the Department of Environmental Quality in 2020, also stresses the benefits of healthy soils on the environment.

“Healthy soils will also increase soil water holding capacity, reduce soil erosion, reduce stormwater runoff, reduce pollutant loading of waterways, sequester carbon, and reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers and irrigation to establish and maintain constructed greenscapes.”

Farmer resources

While resources and technical support for farmers vary by country, U.S. farmers have access to experts and advice at the county, state and national levels. The USDA’s cooperative extension service is a federal, state and county-supported program to “improve the quality of people’s lives by providing research-based knowledge to strengthen the social, economic and environmental well-being of families, communities and agriculture.” In addition to county extension agents, there are nonprofit organizations that offer support services to North Carolina farmers.

Amanda Egdorf-Sand is the executive director of the North Carolina Foundation for Soil and Water Conservation, whose mission is to promote, protect and improve North Carolina soil and water resources. 

“North Carolina’s largest industry is agriculture and agribusiness, and so there is a significant amount of technical and financial assistance provided to farmers through public and private funding,” Egdorf-Sand said, “to support immediate and long-term on-farm goals that ultimately sustains this strong agricultural economy.”

The foundation supports farmers through a program called Agriculture Cost Share Program. Through this program, “farmers have access to cost-share funding to support on-farm natural resource conservation to improve water quality,” said Egdorf-Sand. 

One practice promoted to support the organization’s water conservation efforts is no-till or conservation tillage, which is “any tillage and planting system that covers 30 percent or more of the soil surface with crop residue, after planting, to reduce soil erosion by water.”

According to Egdorf-Sand, in fiscal year 2021, farmers who participated in ACSP saved nearly 60,000 tons of topsoil. She added, “Since ACSP’s inception in 1984, the practices implemented through the program have saved nearly 8 million tons of soil.”

To till or not to till

Another nonprofit organization that provides support to farmers in the Carolinas is the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA), whose mission is to advocate, educate, and build connections to create sustainable food systems in the Carolinas centered on local and organic agriculture, according to its mission statement.

As the CFSA Farm Services Manager, Mark Dempsey’s job includes working with growers to develop conservation strategies designed to “improve soil management and prevent erosion,” he said. 

Dempsey, like the other exports, feels that, at least in the U.S., farming soils are in good shape, generally speaking. Nonetheless, he believes there are areas for improvement.

“The main thing that degrades soil organic matter is getting in there with the plow and the disk,” he said. 

No-till farming is an approach that minimizes soil erosion, promotes the accumulation of organic matter, and helps soil hold onto moisture longer because it is not directly exposed to the sun and wind, for instance. While beneficial in many ways, no-till farming can be an obstacle for organic farmers.

“The no tillers of the world use herbicides and, as an organization that tries to promote alternatives to that, (it’s a) conflict for us.” 

While acknowledging the dilemma that organic farmers face when weighing the pros and cons of no-till agriculture, Dempsey believes there is cause for optimism.

“But the cool and interesting thing … is that there’s been some recent research to show that, [yes], we degrade soil if we till it. But if we add back a ton of organic matter, it can bounce back pretty quickly.”

Dempsey stressed, however, that we need to produce a lot more organic matter than is currently available to improve soils on a global scale.

Cover cropping is another weapon in the fight against soil degradation. 

“We want a winter cover crop on the land to protect the soil from being damaged by bad weather,” Patterson said.

At the N.C. State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Lake Wheeler Field Laboratory, which “offers nearly 1,500 acres for teaching, research and extension,” according to its website, extensive research is being done on how cover crops can improve soil health, Patterson said.

“If we protect our soil and try our best to maintain soil health … that’s the best way to address climate change issues. There is no question that climate change is affecting the health of our crops, both yield and quality.”

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Coastal Review partners with North Carolina Health News to provide our readers with more news of the North Carolina coast.

A State Climate Office of North Carolina program that records weather and soil data will soon be able to collect that information at Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

The Jockey’s Ridge station will be the 44^th research-grade, real-time weather station making up the North Carolina Environment and Climate Observing Network, or ECOnet. Currently, there are 43 in North Carolina, some in the coastal communities of Gates, Lewiston, Plymouth, Aurora, Castle Hayne and Bald Head, and the rest across the state as far west as Mount Mitchell.

The stations, 33-foot tall aluminum towers some of which are solar powered, have 15 different sensors standardized across the network that read atmospheric and soil parameters such as air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, precipitation and soil moisture and temperature at one-minute intervals. The data are then transmitted back to the Cimate Office in Raleigh every five minutes, per ECOnet.

All collected data are on the ECOnet website, where researchers, homeowners, farmers and others can access current conditions, learn if it’s too windy to apply pesticides, not the right time to plant or to harvest, if it’s too hot to work outside, climate trends, and regularly updated photos of the towers. ECOnet also maintains a historical record that is used to validate weather and climate models so that the accuracy can be improved. All the information is free and available to the public.

Dr. Sheila Saia, associate director of the state Climate Office, told Coastal Review Friday that the base of the new ECOnet station at Jockey’s Ridge State Park will be installed in May. The station should be up and running this summer, when data will become available on the website.

“That’s actually going to be really big news for us because we don’t have any stations right now on the Outer Banks,” she said.

The program got its start in 1978. The first 14 stations were all based at agricultural research stations and were part of the Agriculture Network, or AgNet, Saia said. The weather station network was administered in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Sciences when there was an agriculture weather program.

“They wanted to have weather data to study to model crop yield,” she said, which what the first 14 stations mostly focused on, agriculture. The program maintained for a bit before the state Climate Office transitioned in the late 1990s to North Carolina State University. From that point, ECOnet began to grow to what it is today, and has partnered with state and federal agencies including the departments of Transportation and Air Quality.

Saia presented the basics of ECOnet during the North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute’s annual conference held last month in Raleigh. 

Saia said in an interview with Coastal Review the data is to help North Carolinians make decisions and ECOnet staff are currently looking more broadly at who needs data.

“With the Jockey’s Ridge station, for example, that’s a partnership with the state parks,” she said. “Having weather data available at that location has big implications, implications for a lot of different folks, from beachgoers to emergency management for extreme events and hurricanes.”

Saia said in that in some cases, it takes less than a year to get an ECOnet station in place, from finding a partner who is interested to signing the contract with North Carolina State University, which the climate office is under. But, the Jockey’s Ridge station took longer, about two years, because of having to meet additional requirements to withstand the powerful winds there.

ECOnet also has a few other stations that are called ECOnet extended, Saia said. These are separate because they are different in some way from the standard tower. The newest extended station is in Roanoke Rapids, which comes in at 3 meters. While it’s shorter, the tower has several sensors but it can’t take readings at 6 and 10 meters like the standard towers. The other extended site is at Grandfather Mountain.

On Friday, the website began including these extended sites.

“Before today,” she said Friday, “We didn’t have the ECOnet extend the stations on this map, but as of today, they are up so they’re represented as squares.”

ECOnet is funded through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Mesonet Program, described on its website as a national network of networks that provide nonfederal climate data to NOAA and other government organizations, to emergency planners and first responders, to researchers and to the public.

While NOAA has federally supported weather stations across the county, they were finding that those are still very disperse in terms of emergency management needs, Saia said. The National Mesonet Program is specifically for states to fund smaller networks. These funds are used to support ongoing maintenance.

The Mesonet program is very complementary and it’s meant to be that way, Saia said. The National Weather Service is actually using this data to make forecasts in places where they don’t have federally funded stations. This makes for more accurate weather forecasting.

ECOnet data are being used to help understand how weather processes are occurring.

“We don’t have a complete understanding of why weather happens and why different weather events happen because otherwise we would have like 100% certainty, right? We’re always learning and so researchers are using these data because they’re available,” Saia said.

But, the downside of these stations is that the data collected only represents the landscape from which it’s collecting. For example, those outside of Chapel Hill where it’s not urbanized will have a different experience than what the station in Chapel Hill would record.

“We’re always having conversations about do we need another station at this place because it’s actually helpful,” she said. The more forested rural part of Orange County is not the same as urban part of Orange County. “We’re always thinking about is there a place where a station could go that is going to actually help folks like make decisions that it’s not already there?”

Saia, before joining the state Climate office in June 2021, worked to develop ShellCast, an online tool used to help shellfish growers with shellfish area harvest closures. The app is updated every morning with data from the state Climate Office.

She said much of their work is outreach and it is part of the mission, extension and outreach.

“We have an understanding of the research but we also know that there’s someone in some place in North Carolina that needs to make a decision. We kind of stand in that middle ground where we are aware of the research, and the new advancements, but we’re also aware of the decisions people are making, so we kind of bring those two together to support communities in North Carolina.”

Just look around.

Rising sea level, increased tidal flooding, more frequent, beach-eroding storms – those who live and work on Topsail Island see it.

With the help of a new state program, the three towns on the barrier island are tackling where and how to prepare for what’s to come in the face of the changing climate.

“Topsail Island is no stranger to resilience,” said Surf City Mayor Doug Medlin. “We’ve had to go through this many, many times, but maybe we’re going to learn some new things to make us more resilient. Some people don’t believe when you say ‘climate change,’ but climate change is here and if you don’t believe it just look around at everything. We’re going to have to be more resilient to all of this stuff, especially the water that’s rising. We know it’s going to rise. We’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve got to be prepared for.”

Medlin’s comments set the stage Wednesday night in Surf City Town Hall during the first public meeting about Topsail Island’s island-wide resiliency project.

North Topsail Beach, Surf City and Topsail Beach are among 26 coastal communities — eight counties and 18 municipalities — in the state to receive grants on behalf of the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s N.C. Resilient Coastal Communities Program, or NC-RCCP.

This is the first year of this program, one that aims to boost resilience efforts in the state’s 20 coastal counties and encourages those who live and work along the coast to participate in finding solutions and prioritizing projects designed to help their communities bounce back from flooding and storms.

NC-RCCP is a product of the state’s 2020 Climate Risk Assessment & Resilience Plan, which was the result of Executive Order 80 signed by Gov. Roy Cooper in October 2018.

The program is funded by the North Carolina General Assembly and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Mackenzie Todd, a coastal resilience specialist with the Division of Coastal Management, explained Wednesday that the 2020 Resilience Plan directs the state to establish a formal planning process to get projects in coastal communities to shovel-ready status.

The Topsail Island towns were among about 30 coastal communities that applied for the program.

The division has contracted directly with and paired consultants with the municipalities and counties selected earlier this year.

Kleinfelder Inc., a San Diego-based architectural, engineering and scientific consulting firm, is overseeing Topsail Island’s resiliency plan.

Coastal communities that are part of the NC-RCCP are undergoing the same, four-phase process.

One of the initial steps of the process include the establishment of community action teams that consist of representatives, including local government officials, residents and business owners, from within those counties and municipalities.

The Topsail Island Community Action Team, or CAT, includes about 20 members and kicked off its first meeting in mid-October.

Michael Hicks, project manager with Kleinfelder, said the team has held three workshops during which the group developed a vision, established a set of goals, and identified natural infrastructure, critical assets, vulnerable populations and hazards.

The team’s goals include finding ways to minimize damage from flooding and storms, improve reliability of built infrastructure and road access, identify and prioritize specific resiliency projects and investments, and conserve and adapt natural infrastructure.

Natural infrastructure the team has identified include New River Inlet, wetlands, public beaches, marshes, North Topsail Beach’s maritime forest, Surf City’s maritime forest, New River Inlet’s bird nesting islands, Lea and Hutaff islands, and Holly Shelter Game Land.

Critical assets include businesses, powerlines, water and sewer infrastructure, main roads, emergency access roads, churches and religious meeting places, and tourist destinations.

The team’s list of vulnerable populations includes the elderly, those with limited financial resources, and property owners whose property is located within a Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, zone and do not qualify for federal flood insurance or any type of federal post-storm aid.

Hicks clicked through a series of a maps displayed on a large screen in a meeting room of Surf City’s town hall that depict projected sea level rise over the next 50 years.

The maps were created primarily with data produced from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to show sea level rise projections consistent with North Carolina’s Climate Science Report. That report projects sea rise at a rate of about 3 feet.

Suggestions from those who attended the meeting Wednesday included adding properties in inlet hazard areas, fishermen and oystermen to the vulnerability assessment and areas on the mainland where development is being planned under natural infrastructure.

North Topsail Beach Planning Director Deb Hill urged that the towns work together to identify a project that will benefit all three towns.

The second phase of the project is to develop a portfolio of potential solutions, including nature-based solutions.

Todd said the hope is that more coastal communities will be included in the program.

Though “geographically small,” estuaries are “economically huge,” according to a recently released update to a decade-old report on the economic value of these coastal regions where rivers mix with salt water.

Restore America’s Estuaries and The Ocean Foundation released in 2009 the report, “The Economic and Market Value of America’s Coasts and Estuaries: What’s at Stake?” Backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this first report examined economic impacts of estuaries during that time to gross state and domestic product in 21 regions of the continental United States. It also reviewed the benefits of five major sectors of the economy: fisheries, energy infrastructure, marine transportation, real estate and recreation.

The 2021 update presented Nov. 3, prepared by TBD Economics and the Center for the Blue Economy, expands on the previous report and looks at natural infrastructure such as wetlands and oyster reefs, and coastal blue carbon, or the carbon captured by marine organisms and stored in coastal ecosystems, in the local economies of six case study sites: Pamlico Sound in North Carolina, Great Egg Harbor in New Jersey, Florida’s Tampa Bay, Terrebonne-Haute Basin in Louisiana, San Pablo Bay in California, and Snohomish Estuary in Washington.

“Estuaries are small places with huge economic impact. They’re 4% of the continental landmass in the U.S., eight of our 10 largest cities are along estuaries, 40% of our U.S. population and 47% of our gross domestic product are all generated from estuary counties. So what happens in estuaries affects all of us,” Restore America’s Estuaries President and CEO Daniel Hayden explained during the Nov. 3 press conference to present the report update.

Hayden said that since the first report, 15% more Americans live in coastal communities, especially within the Gulf Coast region. This means there’s more people and more property at risk than ever before. Also, there are two times the number of billion-dollar-plus storms as there were just a decade ago, resulting in 69% more deaths.

“These are trends that we’re seeing across the entire country,” Hayden said, citing a study from The Pew Research Center that found 63% of Americans say they’re seeing the effects of climate change today. “So this is no longer a future problem. It’s today’s reality.”

These storms and extreme weather are not affecting all communities equally. “There’s an increasing body of research that shows that economically disadvantaged communities are impacted much worse by coastal flooding and storms than other communities,” Hayden said. He added these storms take an immense human toll and cause disruption to families and communities, which makes it even harder for communities that are already struggling.

Hayden said there is a clear case for investment in the coast. For every $1 invested in mitigation, $6 is saved in recovery and this investment can help avoid human suffering and improve habitats. Every $1 million invested in habitat restoration creates an average of 17 jobs. “This is a much higher rate of return than the traditional industries such as coal, gas or nuclear energy generation, there’s a lot of opportunities for us to continue to invest in our coasts while investing in our economy.”

The update includes two new categories, “coastal blue carbon” and “natural infrastructure,” in its assessment of conditions in the continental U.S. This new information was included to fill considerable gaps in understanding the benefits provided by coastal natural infrastructure and blue carbon, according to the update. The values for natural infrastructure flood resilience and carbon sequestration presented in the case studies illustrate the current economic benefits provided by these two services in regions across the country.

The report explains that conserving and restoring estuaries rich in coastal blue carbon –greenhouse gas carbon dioxide sequestered in the soil — mitigates the effects of climate change and provides additional benefits such as nursery habitat for fish and reduction of storm surge impact. NOAA defines natural infrastructure as healthy ecosystems including forests, wetlands, floodplains, dune systems and reefs, that offer many benefits like storm protection through wave attenuation or flood storage capacity and enhanced water services and security.

Hayden added that the value of blue carbon sequestration totals $600 million to $3.7 billion at the six sites studied, and natural infrastructure helped avoid between $1 billion and $3.1 billion in property losses. “So we can sort of imagine the impact they have on our country as a whole,” he said.

“We also know the value of this natural infrastructure,” he said. There’s been a lot of studies that show that property behind wetlands have less storm damage, but the value depends on keeping existing wetlands intact, and thereby preventing or reducing economic losses.

Hayden said it’s critical to sustain and increase federal and state investments in our coasts.

“It’s estimated the voluntary carbon markets would grow to about $50 billion by 2030 and this provides an opportunity to fund investments in our coasts, particularly in blue carbon, as an incremental finance tool, and a chance for the attribution of blue carbon value to the wetlands increases their value,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunity here to develop collaborations between federal, state and local governments as well as the private sector to continue investment in our estuaries.”

NOAA Office of Habitat Conservation Director Carrie Selberg Robinson explained during the Nov. 3 presentation that her office and Restore America’s Estuaries had worked about two years on the update.

“Estuaries play a really important role in protecting communities from the impacts of flooding, climate change and sea level rise. And habitats like salt marshes and seagrass beds serve as natural infrastructure that protect coastal communities from flooding and erosion,” she said.

When RAE proposed the update, Robinson said her office “wholeheartedly agreed that a more current look at the economic value of estuaries would be an important tool for all of us at NOAA and for all of our partners in conservation to better understanding of what these valuable systems are worth is a really critical tool for preserving and restoring the coastal habitats in these places that are important to our communities.”

TBD Economics President Tracy Rouleau said that the first report was a primer on the value of ecosystem services. The original report addressed the best known, at least at the time, ecosystem services, that make up the ocean, or marine, economy: tourism and recreation, commercial fisheries, ports and shipping, and energy infrastructure.

The authors included a “more contemporary view of ecosystem services” in the update with the six case studies that “connect estuaries directly to the climate crisis facing our nation in the world.”

The update estimates the value over the next 30 years of certain wetlands helping reduce flood damage and storing carbon in the soils that could offset carbon releases from other sources.

Rouleau said that the case study works under the assumption that the coastal blue carbon and the natural infrastructure values are present today and those benefits are continued over 30 years. “But if the wetlands are developed, the values are lost,” she said.

“Beyond these measurable benefits, estuaries are at the heart of so many of our coastal communities. Without healthy estuaries, ways of life that have defined our communities for generations would disappear. The value of restoring and strengthening our estuaries can, in the end, really only be measured by the value each of us place on the quality of life we pass on to our future generations,” Hayden wrote in a release about the report.

Snapshot of Pamlico Sound findings

Pamlico Sound makes up the southern part of the Albemarle-Pamlico system, which spans more than 3,000 square miles of water, and is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Outer Banks.

The sound’s wetlands, oyster reefs and subaquatic vegetation are features that improve water quality by reducing erosion and wave activity and filtering water. Seagrass meadows are considered some of the most important natural carbon sinks in marine environments, according to the 2021 update.

Though Pamlico Sound is a largely undeveloped estuary, with a small amount of low- and medium-intensity development, many worry that nutrient runoff from stormwater, agriculture, wastewater treatment and industrial facilities will contribute to a long-term, coast-wide problem worsened by prolonged flooding and saltwater intrusion. The report also finds concerns that wastewater, stormwater and transportation systems will be affected by saltwater intrusion, more severe and prolonged flooding and storm surge.

In 2016, recreational fisheries had a $1 billion impact on the state economy, commercial fisheries had a $180 million impact, and saltwater fishing created almost 17,000 jobs. In 2019, commercial fishers landed more than 10 million pounds of seafood valued at more than $15 million in and around Pamlico Sound. The economic impact of tourism in 2012 by Dare, Carteret, Currituck and Hyde counties exceeded $1.37 billion.

The estimated benefits from natural infrastructure in Pamlico Sound range from $48.8 million to $109.9 million over a 30-year period, assuming a flood that historically would occur only once in 100 years. This is the present value of potential flood damage totals over a 30-year period, according to the update.

“Climate change may double the risk of a severe flood occurring, in which case benefits would increase to between $97.7 million and $219.8 million. These values are for damages to property exposed to flooding and do not include the damage to business sales or employment, tourism, and recreation, nor the value of possible losses from effects on human health. These damage estimates should thus be considered conservative, that is they are likely to be low,” according to the update.

The value of coastal blue carbon benefits ranges from $3,374 per hundred hectares to $19,465 per hundred hectares. The total value for the 37,000 hectares in the estuary range from $124.8 million to $720.2 million, depending on the scenario. The low-probability, high-impact climate outcome scenario resulted in a coastal blue carbon value of $1.4 billion.

The broad range in these benefit estimates is due to several factors, including variation in the “wetlands effect” coming from differences in the precise location, and amount of wetlands between the valued assets and the water; uncertainty about future economic conditions reflected in differing discount rates in the coastal blue carbon study; and assumptions about the increasing severity of storms due to climate change, the report says.

Coastal blue carbon and natural infrastructure provide complementary services. Combined, the natural infrastructure and coastal blue carbon benefits range from $173.6 to $940.0 million.

The report warns that these are preliminary estimates intended to help shape overall strategies to manage wetland resources on the Pamlico Sound.

The report as a whole

The 21 regions examined are comprised of 380 counties bordering the Atlantic, Gulf
of Mexico, Pacific, and Great Lakes, making up 4% of the land area of the U.S. From that 4% is 47% of the output of the U.S. economy, or $8.8 trillion in gross domestic product, 39% of the employment — around 59.4 million jobs and 40% of the population, about 130 million people, in 2018.

From 2009 to 2018, employment and gross domestic product grew faster in estuary regions than in the U.S. as a whole, while housing and population rates grew at a similar pace, according to the report. Employment growth rates during that window were fastest in the estuary regions on the Pacific and South Atlantic coasts, with population and housing growth fastest in the Carolinas, western Gulf of Mexico and Puget Sound, Restore America’s Estuaries noted about the update.

A key component of the estuary regions’ economy are those sectors directly connected to the oceans and Great Lakes, which provided 3.1 million jobs and contributed $301.9 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018. These sectors tend to be largest in the major urban areas but water-dependent industries are more important in less urban areas such as the coastal areas of North Carolina, with 45,000 jobs but 12.4% of employment.

More than 70% of the employment in coastal communities is in recreation and coastal tourism generates an economic value of about $531 billion, measured by employment. This employment tends to tie closely to the environmental and ecological health of estuaries.

Estuaries produce more food per acre than the most productive mid-western farmland and provide habitat for more than two-thirds of U.S. commercial fish harvest, the update states.

A new report finds that if steps aren’t taken immediately to fight climate change in the state, it will come out of the pockets of North Carolinians over the next 20 to 30 years.

The Environmental Defense Fund commissioned RTI International to look at the short-term financial ramifications if no urgent action is taken to curb climate-warming pollution. The report, “Climate Change in North Carolina: Near-term Impacts on Society and Recommended Actions,” is a 56-page document released Dec. 14 by the independent, nonprofit research and development institute in the Research Triangle Park.

RTI researchers relied on the findings from the North Carolina Climate Science Report, or NCCSR, released in June and updated in September that assesses historical climate trends and potential future climate change in the state under increased greenhouse gas concentrations.

“Looking at the report as a whole, it is alarming to see how the costs of climate change are mounting across North Carolina’s economy — virtually no sector will be untouched,” said David Kelly, EDF North Carolina Political Affairs senior manager. “Farmers are seeing crop impacts from the boomerang of droughts and floods; residents and business owners at the coast are seeing their wallets and properties battered by flooding and hurricanes; hospitals are seeing more emergency room visits from extreme heat, and more. Lately, the effects of climate change have not been subtle.”

EDF, an international nonprofit organization that creates solutions to the serious environmental problems, links science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships. The Raleigh-based staff works on a wide range of issues, from climate and clean energy, to stream restoration, to habitat protection on working lands, to sustainable agriculture and fisheries, Kelly said.

George Van Houtven, author of the new climate change report and researcher at RTI International, explained in an interview that numerous human activities release warming gases into the atmosphere, which increase air temperatures globally, leading to climate change.

“These activities include the burning of fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas. This warming leads to many hazards for humans including sea level rise, stronger hurricanes and, in some places, more frequent and intense rainstorms. The negative impacts on human health, safety and economic livelihoods will only increase if nothing is done to combat climate change and its hazards,” he said.

“Climate Change in North Carolina” focuses on climate change projections for the state, based on a “no climate action” scenario, or how is climate expected to change if no meaningful action is taken at a global scale to reduce emissions, and looks at nine types of climate hazards: air temperature increases, precipitation changes, flooding, high winds, wildfires, landslides, water temperature and quality changes, air quality changes, and Insects, pathogens and invasive plants.

Researchers estimated projected costs caused by these climate impacts on eight major sectors of the state’s economy within the next 20 to 30 years. The eight major sectors are human health and safety, agriculture and forestry, commercial fishing and aquaculture, transportation infrastructure, water infrastructure and services, energy supply and demand, recreation and tourism, and residential and commercial property.

Van Houtven said that one of the most pressing issues is the increased risk of flooding across the state, but particularly in coastal areas.

“Coastal areas are particularly at risk because they face the combined effects of sea level rise, larger and more powerful hurricanes and more intense and frequent rainstorms,” he said.

The combination of sea level rise and more intense coastal storms will be extremely costly for properties and infrastructure in the coastal region, Kelly said. He gave the example that more than 1,300 residential and commercial properties, valued at almost $340 million, are at risk of chronic flooding, or flooding at least 26 times per year. By 2045, with no climate action, this estimate jumps to almost 15,600 properties, valued at nearly $4 billion.

“To understand the magnitude of this impact you have to look beyond the immediate damage. More flooding increases insurance rates and decreases property values, which then erode the local tax base needed for essential community services, like schools and hospitals. In lower-income communities across eastern North Carolina, these changes can be devastating,” Kelly said.

Another finding Kelly pointed out is that more coastal flooding could mean more traffic.

“In North Carolina, over 2,000 miles of roadways are estimated to already be at risk of high-tide flooding. The total number of hours that motorists spend in roadway delays because of high-tide flooding will increase more than four-fold between now and 2060,” he said.

Climate change is also expected to increase the cost to maintain the state’s road system. North Carolina currently spends about $1 billion every year on state-maintained roads. Climate change, particularly through its effects on sea levels and extreme events, such as floods, extreme heat and landslides, will make it increasingly costly to maintain this system.

Van Houtven said that in addition to the increased risk of flooding, “one major concern from warming temperatures is a large projected increase in the number of very hot, max above 95-degree days, even in the next 20 years. This will significantly increase the risk of heat-related illness, particularly for vulnerable populations such as farmworkers in eastern North Carolina.”

In the Raleigh, Wilmington and Fayetteville areas, emergency room visits caused by heat stroke and other heat-related conditions are projected in the report to double or triple from 2010 to 2050. These health risks will be disproportionately felt by low-income and socially disadvantaged populations, according to the report. In recent decades, farmworkers have accounted for 10 to 20% of heat-related illnesses and deaths in the United States.

The agriculture and forestry sector is vulnerable to almost all the climate hazard categories, according to the findings. Projected temperature and precipitation change are expected to negatively affect production and farm income. The most harmful hazards likely will be caused by intensifying extreme events, such as hurricanes, extreme heat, droughts and floods.

“As a point of reference, Hurricane Florence in 2018 caused $1 billion in combined crop and livestock losses and $50 million in forestry losses,” the report notes.

Commercial fishing and aquaculture will also be hard hit by climate change, particularly more severe hurricanes and storms.

“For example, in 2018, Hurricane Florence caused $13.5 million in commercial fishing and aquaculture losses. In addition, changing ocean temperatures are expected to shift habitats for commercially caught fish species. Warming estuarine waters may also lead to more fish kills, and increasing ocean acidification can harm shellfish production, which could impact many livelihoods in this industry,” the report states.

The report also indicates that the state will see an increase in water-related issues. “Many of the most severe climate threats facing North Carolina—from sea level rise, to stronger rainstorms and hurricanes, to changes in water quality and temperature —are related to water. Therefore, not surprisingly, climate change is already putting significant pressure on water systems and services, such as putting residents at higher risk of dam failures, and these pressures will only increase in the coming decades.”

Kelly reiterated that the state is already seeing the impacts of climate change — from the mountains to the coast and everywhere in between.

“Many people hear about climate change as a faraway and distant threat — a problem that will impact future generations. This research reveals the very tangible ways that climate change is affecting N.C. residents and the economy now — and how those costs will rise within the next few decades,” Kelly said. “It shows that, while planning for the future, we must simultaneously take action now to curb the impacts of climate change that North Carolinians are already feeling — effects of extreme heat, drought, strong storms and flooding. All of these effects are the result of a changing climate, and our neighbors in Black and Brown communities are feeling the effects disproportionately more than other areas.”

Kelly added that the report demonstrates that this isn’t a problem “we can continue to push off: we must move to implement actionable policy solutions like those identified in the Clean Energy Plan.”

The Clean Energy Plan was developed through a series of stakeholder meetings and working groups in response to Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80, “North Carolina’s Commitment to Address Climate Change and Transition to a Clean Energy Economy,” which calls for significant near-term reductions in climate-warming pollution across the state’s electric power sector and identifies several policy pathways for achieving those results, Kelly said.

The North Carolina Climate Science Report, which the climate change cost report is based on, supports Executive Order 80 as an independent, peer-reviewed scientific contribution.

“Hopefully the information in the report will put state leaders on high alert that we cannot afford to delay concrete policy action on climate change. These findings compel us to act decisively to put a firm limit on climate-warming pollution — an action that can help curb the worst impacts of climate change, while growing clean energy jobs and protecting the communities most impacted by pollution and climate impacts,” Kelly said.

Immediate actions the report recommends includes aggressively moving away from fossil fuels, like coal, oil, and gas, to avert some of the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

“While there is no substitute for federal action on climate, state initiatives are essential to making critical near-term reductions, helping mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and offering a roadmap for ambitious federal action, especially since North Carolina ranks among the nation’s top 15 emitters of CO2,” according to the report.

Other recommendations include making it easier to invest in clean energy and carbon reduction technology, promote electric vehicles, work with others who have had success with resilience tools, fine tune state-level resilience plans, incentivize resilient farming practices, use public and private programs funding for resilience planning and action, and protect and conserve multi-benefit natural lands.

Van Houtven explained that many of the findings and recommendations from this report are equally applicable to other states, particularly in the Southeast.

“There is clear evidence that climate change is already affecting the people and economy of North Carolina. These impacts are likely to grow and even accelerate, especially if the state does not act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to prepare, adapt, and protect against the growing hazards from climate change,” Van Houtven said.

“Actions taken in North Carolina to address climate change could serve as a model and leadership for other states. One example of a step that North Carolina could take would be to implement policies that put a price on greenhouse gas emissions as a way to incentivize cost-effective emission reductions.”

Access to grants for local governments, tools for better planning and more local participation and training are among the strategies in a multiagency push that’s the next step toward incorporating climate science and resiliency planning throughout North Carolina.

Thursday, the state Climate Change Interagency Council, which includes all cabinet-level agencies, wrapped up its review of the recently issued North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. The report includes an in-depth, region-by-region look at the progression to a warmer, wetter climate and what that means for communities throughout the state.

The council also got a look at what’s ahead in implementing on a broad scale the resiliency called for in the report.

“Producing a plan is not as important as continuing to take action as we move forward,” Jessica Whitehead, the state’s chief resilience officer, told council members as she laid out the path ahead.

Whitehead, of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, said establishing guiding principles that could be applied in different areas and situations was key.

“We know it’s a challenge to define what climate resilience looks like from Murphy to Manteo, and so it’s stepping back and looking at what applies no matter what your place is, no matter what your agency is, no matter what your biggest climate vulnerabilities are,” she said.

The principles outlined in a path forward include acting quickly and decisively on most harmful threats as a long-term approach that includes collaboration on equitable, community-based decisions.

“We know and we’ve heard very strongly that we need to have resilience training for local communities. A lot of people have heard the word ‘resilience,’ but they don’t know what it means in the context of their everyday work,” Whitehead said.

Although the word is often associated with recent disasters, Whitehead said climate resiliency is not all about disaster response.

“Disasters are an important part of climate change, but they are not the only long-term climate hazards,” she said, adding that sea level rise, droughts and extreme heat will also have an impact on the way people live. “These are long-term issues that happen over decades, and we know they need long-term, equitable solutions.”

“There are very few consistent sources of funding for aspects of resilience that are not construction projects,” Martin said.

One state program that ties together planning and construction and that could become a template for others is the recently announced Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which will assist 20 local governments in the coastal region with vulnerability assessments, resilience planning, engineering and design for local projects.

The funding, $830,000 from state disaster assistance and a $1.1 million National Wildlife Foundation grant, won’t require a match and will be used to get at least one project shovel ready in each jurisdiction chosen.

Tancred Miller, policy and planning manager with the Division of Coastal Management, said the effort is aimed at finding local governments to work with that are at risk but don’t have the resources to launch a planning effort on their own.

“To help them find their way through the challenges, understanding the risks, understanding their options and then doing something to put themselves in a better position,” Miller said Thursday during the meeting, finding dedicated funding for local governments to plan on an ongoing basis is essential.

“Obviously, the coastal zone is on the front lines for a lot of these big events, these big storms and hurricanes. We see a lot of flooding from the events year after year, but we don’t want to be in a position of Band-Aiding at this point,” he said. “The decisions have to be made at the local level, so how can we provide the support, both on the technical side as well as the financial side?”

Miller said he expects the communities to be chosen early next year, with vulnerability assessments and project planning to run through the year.

North Carolina can expect large changes in climate by the end of the century, much larger than any time in the state’s history, and it’s very likely that temperatures here will increase substantially during all seasons unless the global increase in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is stopped.

Temperatures warmer than historic norms, disruptive flooding from rising seas, increasingly intense and frequent rainstorms and more and more intense hurricanes are “virtually certain” in the next 80 years.

That’s according to an independent, peer-reviewed report released Wednesday by North Carolina State University’s North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, or NCICS. As a result of hotter temperatures and increased humidity, the state can face public health risks, more frequent and more intense heavy rains from hurricanes and other weather systems, increased flooding in coastal and low-lying areas and severe droughts that are more intense and that will increase the risk of wildfires.

“Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are most likely causing much, if not all, of the warming that we have observed,” said David R. Easterling, one of the report’s 15 authors, during a press conference Wednesday.

The institute is a multidisciplinary team of experts collaborating in climate and scientific research. The report was assembled, reviewed and revised over the course of eight months beginning in July 2019 and was prepared in response to a request from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality as part of the state’s response to Gov. Roy Cooper’s 2018 Executive Order 80.

While there were no real surprises in the report, which looks at observed and projected climate change in North Carolina and whose findings are consistent with the U.S. National Climate Assessment, it brings the science to the state level and highlights the specific challenges ahead for North Carolina.

The researchers said 2009-2018 was the warmest 10-year period on record in North Carolina.

“It’s about a half degree warmer than the warmest decade in the 20th century, the 1930s, the Dust Bowl era,” Easterling said, adding that as the report was being finalized, 2019 turned out to be the warmest year on record for North Carolina and the second warmest globally.

Also, the past four years saw the largest number of heavy precipitation events on record for the state.

So what does it all mean for folks in coastal North Carolina?

The researchers said government officials should take the report into consideration when planning for new infrastructure, such as roads that will have to be designed to different standards to withstand the climactic changes. Individuals can also do their part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations.

State Climatologist Kathie Dello, also an author of the report, suggested that North Carolina residents should talk about the report with their friends, families and neighbors.

“There are so many folks who don’t think about climate all day like we do on the panel, and I’ve heard a number of times from folks, ‘This is the first time someone’s talked to me about climate change or projections or what I should expect in my town.’ So, have the conversation. I think it’s really effective and people trust you as a messenger because they know you, they like you and trust you about other things,” Dello said.

“There are so many folks who don’t think about climate all day like we do on the panel, and I’ve heard a number of times from folks, ‘This is the first time someone’s talked to me about climate change or projections or what I should expect in my town.’ So, have the conversation.”

Kathie Dello, State Climatologist

Reide Corbett, director at the Coastal Studies Institute, dean of Integrated Coastal Programs for East Carolina University, and another author of the report, said coastal residents should be thinking about more sustainable growth, not just after disasters such as Hurricane Dorian’s flooding on Ocracoke Island, but also as high-tide, or “sunny day” flooding becomes more and more an everyday occurrence.

“That’s something that, locally, many of the communities need to start thinking about, preparing for and responding to likely after an event,” he said. “I think Ocracoke is a good example where, as they’re rebuilding, they’re considering the storm that they just had and rebuilding to new standards, not rebuilding to what it was in the past.”

Different responses may be necessary along the North Carolina coast, depending on where a community lies.

Sea level is rising 1.8 inches per decade at Duck on the northern Outer Banks, but only at a rate of 0.9 inches per decade at Wilmington on the southern coast because land along the northern coast is settling or subsiding more rapidly.

Also, the southern coast of North Carolina experiences more tropical storms and stronger hurricanes than the northern part of the state does, said Rick Luettich, director of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City and a report author.

“That trend in and of itself will certainly be sustained,” he said, adding that as global mean sea level rise accelerates, the differences will be increasingly less obvious.

“As sea level rise starts going up faster and faster, that difference will become smaller and smaller,” Luettich said.

While the latest report deals mainly with the science of climate change, a risk assessment and resiliency plan are under review. Subsequent reports will deal with the consequences, such as the effects on agriculture, fisheries and other natural and economic resources and how to address those issues.

The authors agreed that examining the challenges specific to the state is an important step.

“The idea that science is being incorporated into policy in North Carolina is a huge step forward, particularly from a sea level and inundation perspective,” Corbett said. “I’m very pleased with the direction that we’re going and this report is the first step for North Carolina and really using it in developing science-based policy.”

Learn more

• Read a “plain language” summary
• Read the full report

Published in partnership with Carolina Public Press

RALEIGH — A North Carolina research group is putting the final touches on a state climate report — described as the first of its kind — that details an array of major changes through the end of the century, including the dynamics of rising seas, wetter storms and more frequent flooding, according to a preview of the findings presented last week in Raleigh.

The Asheville-based North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, a team of North Carolina State University experts who work closely with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists and provide technical work for NOAA in its quadrennial National Climate Assessment, presented the preliminary findings during the state Climate Change Interagency Council’s meeting Jan. 22 in Raleigh. The council is to use the report as part of a state risk and resiliency plan due in March.

The report draws on the work of in-state experts as well as science used in the national assessment. The researchers developed sets of predictions for changes through 2100, including regional predictions for the state’s coast, Piedmont and mountain regions.

The report looks at the impacts from both a low range of greenhouse gasses that implies further efforts to lower emissions and a high range that represents current projections if left unchecked. Confidence in the predictions are then broken down into four categories: “low confidence” for predictions in which there is not enough information to determine the impact in North Carolina, along with “likely,” “very likely” and “virtually certain.”

NOAA scientist David Easterling, who works on national assessment, said during the presentation that the categories are more than words, they’re intended to convey the science behind the prediction.

“We actually have calibrated language in there,” Easterling said, “so that if we say something is ‘likely’ it actually has a probability attached to it of 66 to 90%, ‘very likely’ is 90% or greater and the ‘virtually certain’ designation starts at 99%.”

The overarching finding of the report is that “Large changes in North Carolina’s climate — much larger than any time in the state’s history — are very likely by the end of this century under both the lower and higher scenarios.”

The report comes as records are falling almost year by year. The state begins the new decade after its warmest 10-year period on record and after 2019 is now officially the warmest year recorded.

Major changes on the coast

While much of the state will feel the impact of those changes, the most dramatic changes ahead will be along the coastline, sounds and rivers.

Kenneth Kunkel, a senior scientist and lead scientist for assessments with the institute, said last week that continued sea level rise is among the predictions about which there is virtual certainty. Kunkel and Easterling are leading the report project.

Kunkel said the prediction is tied to global sea level rise, which is a virtual certainty.

The report sets the projected sea level rise by 2100 under the lower greenhouse levels a 1.7 to 3.9 feet at Duck and 1.2 to 3.3 feet at Wilmington, taking into account that subsidence is causing sea levels to rise about twice as fast in the northeastern part of the state.

Kunkel said the report authors turned to NOAA experts to study how that will drive an increase in high tide flooding and found a major jump in the frequency.

“Under the high-emission scenario, by 2080 we’re getting it every day of the year, virtually, and that’s because sea level rise has risen to where it is always above that current high tide flooding threshold,” Kunkel said.

Researchers are also certain that North Carolina is among the areas threatened by the prospect of stronger, wetter tropical storms and hurricanes, but Kunkel said that just how that will play out is harder to say.

While warmer oceans mean more water vapor to fuel storms, there are also other factors that dictate what that means for North Carolina.

“There’s high confidence in this for global changes, but if you drill down to any specific region there could be other things that change that,” he said. “We have different levels of confidence for different aspects.”

One aspect that is highly likely to increase, according to the findings, is the amount of precipitation and freshwater flooding from tropical systems that pass over or near the state.

Use in Policy & Planning

The report’s team of authors and advisers are working through about 500 comments gathered last fall and winter during a peer-review process and are expected to finish the report in late February.

From there the report becomes part of an overall risk and resilience strategy document required under Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80, the extensive climate change and energy efficiency initiative launched last year.

Tancred Miller, coastal and ocean policy manager with the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, said the new report is much in line with previous assessments on sea level rise by the state Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel. What jumps out about the new report is the high tide flooding, he said in an email response to Coastal Review Online.

“From what I’ve seen, the preliminary sea level rise findings appear to be consistent with the CRC Science Panel’s 2010 and 2015 reports,” he said. “The new message that has not been covered in-depth in the Science Panel’s reports is the high tide flooding forecast — a nearly daily occurrence by 2100.”

Other predictions for increases in storm frequency, intensity and rainfall contain “the bad news that none of us wants to hear,” said Miller.

Miller said the report will assist agencies as part of the Executive Order 80 mission to lessen the effects of climate change and develop policies that take climate change into consideration.

“The report is meant to be used as a basis to help cabinet agencies evaluate the potential impacts of climate change on our programs, assets and operations, so that we can take the necessary steps to mitigate those impacts,” he said.

Preliminary Key Findings

In the current draft of the report, key findings for North Carolina include the following:

Temperature

• Very likely that temperatures in North Carolina will increase in all seasons.
• A very likely increase in the number of warm nights.
• A likely decrease in the number of cold days.
• A likely increase in the number of hot days.

Precipitation

• Likely that annual total precipitation will increase.
• Virtually certain that atmospheric water vapor content will rise.
• Very likely that extreme precipitation frequency and intensity will increase.

Sea Level Rise

• Virtually certain that the sea level will continue to rise along North Carolina coast.
• Projected sea level rise by 2100 under lower greenhouse levels is 1.7 to 3.9 feet at Duck and 1.2 to 3.3 feet at Wilmington.
• Due to climate and geological changes such as subsidence, sea level is rising about twice as fast along the northeastern coast compared to the southeastern coast.
• High tide flooding is projected to become a nearly daily occurrence by 2100.

Hurricanes

• Intensity of the strongest hurricanes likely to increase.
• High confidence for global changes, but lower confidence for regional predictions.
• Heavy precipitation accompanying hurricanes passing near or over the state is very likely to increase.
• Low confidence concerning future changes in the number of landfalling hurricanes in North Carolina.

Floods & Storms

• Virtually certain that the rising sea level and the increasing intensity of coastal storms, especially hurricanes, will lead to increases in coastal storm-surge flooding.
• Likely that the frequency of severe thunderstorms will increase.
• Likely that increases in extreme precipitation will lead to increases in inland flooding.
• Likely that total snowfall and the number of heavy snowstorms will decrease due to increasing winter temperatures.
• Low confidence concerning future changes in number of winter coastal storms and ice storms.

Compound events & impacts

• Likely that severe droughts will be more intense in the future.
• As a result, likely increase in the frequency of climate conditions conducive to wildfires.
• Likely that urban growth will increase the magnitude of the urban heat island effect, resulting in stronger warming in urban centers.

This story has been updated to clarify that kudzu is not federally recognized as a noxious weed.

CHADBOURN — As the threats and damages from wildfires and storms have been intensified by climate change, the growing danger from invasive plants and animals is rarely a compelling headline. But with the final suspension on Oct. 1 of a federal scientific panel on invasive species, experts warn that more, not less, attention must be dedicated to forestalling future economic and environmental devastation from the invaders.

“We’re just sitting on the edge of an absolute mess,” said Randy Westbrooks, a biologist and invasive species prevention specialist based in Chadbourn.

Westbrooks, who had worked for the federal government from 1979-2012, was an original member of the now “administratively inactive” Invasive Species Advisory Committee. Started 20 years ago, the 12- to 16-member panel made recommendations to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Invasive Species Council, or NISC.

The advisory committee also produced numerous scientific white papers on issues related to invasive species, such as marine bioinvasions, e-commerce and climate change.

“We need those committees,” he said.

Invasive weeds such as hydrilla and phragmites are a continual issue in North Carolina, as well as animals such as lionfish, carp and wild hogs. But Westbrooks said that there are also looming risks to the state such as from red ambrosia beetle, the vector for the fungus that causes laurel wilt disease, and cogongrass, “a horrible plant” that has invaded the pine savannas in Alabama and Georgia.

“Without an external committee providing expert recommendations to NISC, effective NISC-agency policies and programs are at risk in an environment of already heightened and increasing threats and risks from invasive species to human health and welfare, ecosystem stability, food security, and commerce,” said a committee memo submitted in May to the council.

It’s not so unusual for committees to come and go in government, Westbrooks said; it’s that a big, multi-jurisdictional problem such as invasive species requires inbuilt collaboration, continuity and financial resources to be effective. It was that type of cooperative effort that limited the spread in North Carolina of beach vitex, a coastal grass that forms mats that choke out native species and inhibit sea turtle nesting, and witchweed, a parasitic weed that can do serious harm to corn and other agriculture.

Then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, who had served from 1993 to 2001, Westbrooks said, “got it.”

“The invasion of noxious alien species wreaks a level of havoc on America’s environment and economy that is matched only by damage caused by floods, earthquakes, mudslides, hurricanes, and wildfire,” Babbitt said in an April 1998 statement. “These aliens are quiet opportunists, spreading in a slow motion explosion.”

As Westbrooks recalled, Babbitt gave the experts the support and funds, opening what he characterized as the “golden age” of invasive species management.

Now, while his consulting work has him interacting with academics, nonprofits and government agencies, he sometimes gets frustrated with dismissive attitudes about invasive species that he has heard.

“‘Why you so worried about weeds?’ they’ll say,” Westbrooks recounted. “‘Weeds are a local problem. You know what we need to do on public lands? Drill for oil!’”

Westbrooks cited a study by Western Australia scientist Rod Randall, who documented 36,000 species of invasive plants worldwide. Of that, Westbrooks said about 3,000 have been introduced in the U.S. “That means there are 30,000 weeds in the world that are not here yet.” But once they’re here, he said, they’re difficult to eradicate.

That lesson was learned with kudzu. When it was first brought from Japan to the U.S. in 1876, it was valued as an ornamental vine. During the Depression and World War II, it was planted it to control erosion in prairie and farm lands. Within decades, the aggressive vine had climbed its way onto numerous invasive weed lists.

Before long, it was known as the “plant that ate the South.”

Kudzu is not on the federal noxious weed list because of its widespread proliferation but some states, including Florida and New York, recognize it as a noxious weed.

“It took until the 1960s to understand it was the stupidest thing to do,” Westbrooks said about the earlier importation and planting of the weed.

According to a 2011 advisory committee white paper on marine invaders, invasive species are second only to habitat destruction in creating danger to native species, loss of global biodiversity and causing severe and permanent damage to ecosystems.

Some of the awful consequences the paper cites include degradation of the aesthetic quality of our natural resources and the carrying or supporting harmful pathogens and parasites that could affect wildlife and human health.

In a December 2010 paper, the committee warned that climate change effects can amplify the negative impacts of invasive species, setting up little-understood interactions.

“They can result in threats to critical ecosystem functions on which our food system and other essential provisions and services depend, as well as increase threats to human health,” according to the paper. “However, unless we recognize and act on the impact of climate change and its interaction with ecosystems and invasive species, we will fall further behind in our effort to prevent, eradicate, and manage invasive species.”

Chuck Bargeron, co-director of the Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health at the University of Georgia, had been serving as the Invasive Species Advisory Committee chairman when the committee learned in April 2019 that it would be suspended. According to the May memo submitted to the council, the committee was told that the action stemmed from lack of funds and staff capacity to maintain its operations.

At the same time, control of invasive species is requiring more government resources.

“The problem is only getting worse,” Bargeron said. “But it is a problem that is drastically underfunded.”

Bargeron said that the committee, composed of 12-16 volunteers with expertise in invasive species, met twice a year. Travel expenses were reimbursed.

“If nothing else, an advisory panel like this draws attention to the issue and that’s important,” he said. “I served on it for six years and there were some really good people involved with the committee and we produced some really good work … It’s one of the many tools to help with the fight against invasive species.

“I think more can be done across the board to help fight the invasive species issue,” Bargeron said. “Collectively, more should be done to protect the public now and for the future.”

MOREHEAD CITY – The state Coastal Resources Commission is giving its science advisory panel the option to look at sea level rise predictions beyond 30 years in its 2020 update to an assessment that was previously limited in scope.

The report first published in 2010 and updated in 2015 is a way for the CRC to provide understandable sea level projections specific to the state to help inform planning and decision making, Tancred Miller, coastal and ocean policy manager for the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management told Coastal Review Online. The information is available to anyone who needs to use it.

“We have seen it used in online tools, vulnerability assessments, and for educational purposes. It has been referenced by academic institutions, local governments, and nonprofit organizations. Ultimately, we hope that it is useful for long-term planning,” he said.

The CRC tasked its science panel to prepare the first report in 2010, and the panel recommended the report be updated every five years “to stay up to date with scientific understanding,” Miller explained. An April 2012 addendum to the 2010 report was prepared to answer questions CRC members had, and in 2013, the CRC asked for the first five-year update using the most recent science at the time to estimate future sea levels.

But the CRC directed the panel to limit the scope to 2015-2045, or 30 years out, rather than the 90-year time frame used in the original report, which was the first of its kind.

“Sea level rise compounds coastal hazards like flooding, storm surge, and coastal erosion. Global and regional sea level rise projections have been available, as well as historic trends for North Carolina, but state-specific projections had never been done,” Miller said.

Since the last update, attitudes about sea level rise appear to have shifted.

During its July meeting in Beaufort, the CRC decided that the science panel should have the ability to report projections for 30 years and beyond. “Uncertainty increases with longer projections, and that would be explained for all periods included in the report,” Miller said.

Miller said there had been growing recognition, driven primarily by recent storms, that conditions are changing and the state needed to adapt.

“We are flooding in more places, more often, and for longer periods of time than we have in recent memory. Forests are being drowned, wetlands lost, roads and yards flooded, storm drains are flowing backwards. People are seeing changes and want to find solutions,” he said.

The CRC is expected to give during its Sept. 18-19 meeting the science panel the go-ahead to begin the 2020 update process. The meeting will be at New Hanover County Government Center, 230 Government Center Drive, Wilmington.

Relative change

The original 2010 sea level rise report, which forecast up to a 39-inch rise by 2100, was rejected by the General Assembly, which passed the following year a bill restricting coastal policymaking based on sea level rise predictions. Development interests contended the forecast was flawed and that rates of sea level rise differed on different parts of the coast.

The 2015 update gives a high-low range, and a mean, for each of the five tide stations that on the coast, Miller said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tide gauge stations are located in the Army Corps of Engineers’ Field Research Facility in Duck, Oregon Inlet Marina, Duke University Marine Lab dock in Beaufort, Army Corps of Engineers’ maintenance yard and docks at Eagle Island and the Southport Fishing Pier, which is no longer active, according to the 2015 report.

Science panel member Greg “Rudi” Rudolph, with the Carteret County Shoreline Protection Office, told Coastal Review Online that during the 2015 update the panel focused on vertical land motion, or the sinking or rising of the Earth’s surface, and how that affects relative sea level rise. The panel also focused on what was causing different land movement on the coastal plain, which was integrated with absolute sea level rise projections.

“I thought that was really important, he added.

Relative sea level change is how the height of the ocean rises or falls relative to the land at a specific location. Absolute sea level change refers to the height of the ocean surface above the center of the Earth, without regard to whether nearby land is rising or falling, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In the report, the North Carolina coastal plain was segmented based upon vertical land motion and a range of relative sea level rise was provided for each zone, Rudolph said. By having that component in their back pocket, the panel can look at other things that impact sea level rise for the 2020 report.

Miller added that the 2020 update “will look at any new peer-reviewed studies that have been published since the 2015 report, and updated numbers from the tide stations. The new projections will go at least through 2050.”

As of Tuesday, the CRC had yet to finalize the charge for the science panel expected to be given during the September meeting. Miller explained that a “charge” is the CRC’s mechanism to formally ask the science panel to undertake a task and includes specifics on the task, timeline, process and deliverables.

During the CRC meeting in July, Miller presented a proposed timeline for the 2020 update process, which may be adjusted, depending on if the science panel is comfortable with the timeline.

For nearly as long as scientists have been sounding alarms about rising seas, they’ve warned that North Carolina’s long Atlantic coastline and vast network of estuarine waters makes its coastal property especially vulnerable.

But even after recent years of extreme flooding, construction along North Carolina’s beaches has continued apace, with many homes built within the last decade in high-risk areas, according to a new analysis from nonprofit science group Climate Central and national real estate data company Zillow Research.

The report, released July 31, updates the 2018 “Ocean at the Door: New Homes and the Rising Sea,” that projected impacts of average annual ocean flooding on coastal property. It now also looks at 10-year flood risks and incorporates fuller home footprint data.

Rising seas are expected to cause severe flooding that happens an average of every 10 years – or a 10% annual risk – to reach farther inland. Such floods can damage or destroy structures and interior furniture, create unhealthy mold, rust out vehicles and destroy dunes, pools and landscapes.

Estimates in the report were based mostly on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and from Zillow. Risk levels created by rising seas will be influenced by the level of action taken by governments to alleviate carbon emissions by 2050 and 2100, as well as varying elevations and the effectiveness of flood controls, the report states.

Zillow does not take a position on public policy or real estate regulations, said Sarah Mikhitarian, senior economist at Zillow. But she said that accurate information about sea level rise risk is necessary in making decisions about protecting and enjoying real estate.

“I think that it’s something homeowners should be aware of, and future buyers as well,” she said. “Without intervention, thousands of coastal homes will experience increased flooding.

“We definitely wanted to shed light on the impact climate change could have on the industry and people.”

The report revealed that in a third of all 24 coastal states and the District of Columbia, the rate of new construction – after 2009 and before 2017 – has been faster in 10-year flood risk zones than in non-risk zones. At least 17,800 homes built in the last decade will be at risk of inundation of a 10-year flood by 2050, according to the report. By 2100, the risk is projected to be two times higher – or as much as three times higher if nothing is done to stem carbon pollution.

A total of about 10,500 new homes stand on land that will be within the annual flood zone by 2050 – about 7,000 fewer than those that will be in the 10-year flood zone.

Of the 37 counties nationwide with more than 100 homes built in at-risk zones after 2009, two of the top 10 are in North Carolina: Dare County, ranked sixth, with 502 houses; and Currituck County, ranked eighth, with 375 houses.

Overall, North Carolina ranks second among states with the highest number of new homes built in the 10-year flood risk zone during the last decade, with 1,910 homes valued at a total of $840 million. The number of new homes built statewide in the annual risk zone over that same period was ranked second, behind New Jersey, with 1,231 houses totaling $543 million in value.

Although no cities in North Carolina were ranked among those with more than 100 new home in areas of future 10-year flood risk, the nearby cities of Norfolk, Virginia, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina, were ranked in the top ten.

Even as dire as some flooding scenarios could be, the current data does not include deluges that many coastal areas have been experiencing lately, often separate from tropical storms and nor’easters.

“It does not account for rain,” said Climate Central spokesman Peter Gerald.

Gerald said scientific models can accurately predict tidal flooding from water bodies but flooding from heavy rainfall is still difficult to model.

Other variables, such as the recent extreme ice melt in Greenland, could also change the degree of flooding. Gerald said the report does consider the contribution of glacial melt in Antarctica, as well as the potential that less impact could result from more remedial action.

“Panic doesn’t help. Planning does.”

Peter Gerald, Climate Central

Like Zillow, Climate Central does not advocate for policy, Gerald said. It is seeking to provide information that can help homeowners and prospective buyers assess their risk and take the proper measures if appropriate.

“This isn’t doom and gloom and trying to scare everybody into panic,” he said. “Panic doesn’t help. Planning does.”

By 2050, Dare County is expected to have 11,689 houses, valued at more than $4.8 billion, affected by flooding, according to information provided by Zillow Research. By 2100, the number would rise to 18,808 houses valued at $7.69 billion.

Dare would also have the most new houses affected in the state. By 2050, 502 houses worth $2.1 million would be in 10-year flood zones and by 2100, there would be 786 houses worth $3.8 million.

Flooding in New Hanover County would cause the second highest impact in the state. By 2050, there would be 4,316 houses valued at $2.9 billion in 10-year flood zones and by 2100 there would be 8,107 houses valued at $5.6 billion.

Carteret County, on the other hand, had the biggest jump in homes affected. From 5,369 valued at $1.9 billion in 2050 to 11,631 houses valued at $3.8 billion in 2100.

Risk is part of the calculation when choosing where to live, but with so many climate threats – tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, heat waves, drought – people may discount the likelihood of future risks, especially when they’re 80 years out, and focus on near-future rewards, Mikhitarian said.

Choosing a home is to some extent an emotional decision,  she said, and much goes into weighing multiple factors, including children and grandchildren enjoying a house in decades to come.

“People love the water,” she said. “A lot of people hope for the best. “

But homebuyers and owners, she said, need to “bake” flood risk into a list of things they need to consider in assessing the safety of the home’s location.

“It’s important for people to realize what could happen, “ she said.

With coastal real estate and homebuilding industries such a huge part of North Carolina’s tax base – as well as the tourism ecosystem – lawmakers and policy makers in North Carolina have been reluctant to discourage, or regulate, coastal development.  Until recently, the state barely acknowledged that rising seas endanger coastal infrastructure, environments and lifestyles.

But as Mikhitarian sees it, the industry operates responsibly within the state’s regulatory framework, while walking a tightrope between climate threats and the housing market.

“From the real estate industry perspective, people continue to demand and want to live on that part of the coast . . . because they value the ocean so much.

“I think what puts the real estate industry in a tough position is it’s profitable to build coastal homes because there’s a demand for it,” Mikhitarian said. “And you can’t really fault them for that.”

EAST LAKE—The signs are written on the trees.

Dead trees.

Groups of what scientists call “ghost forests” bear witness to climate change, a reality that can be observed by driving U.S. 64 or U.S. 264 through the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

Stark light trunks and barren branches sharply contrast with remaining green trees. The dead trees line ditches and canals throughout the refuge, pointing to a swiftly changing landscape.

“It’s dramatic,” said Scott Lanier, manager of the Alligator River and Pea Island wildlife refuges.

Lanier was one of three original Alligator River personnel when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began staffing the refuge in 1985 following its acquisition in 1984. Lanier stayed at the Alligator River and Pea Island refuges until 1991, then returned in 2006. He’s noticed a loss of refuge land from climate change.

“More land has become inundated,” Lanier said. Certain places where he once was able to walk are now underwater. The Alligator River refuge “is at a low elevation to begin with, so it displays the effects of sea level rise and saltwater intrusion pretty readily.”

As global warming has led to sea level rise, saltwater has increasingly come farther into the refuge and stayed longer than in the past.

The habitat changes are the most noticeable, Lanier said. Some marshy places have become open water; areas that were previously “shrub/scrub habitat” are transitioning to marsh; and some forests adjacent to water bodies have started turning into shrub/scrub habitat as trees die from prolonged exposure to saltwater.

“You get these wholesale changes, and it’s happening at a rapid pace,” Lanier said. “You can notice those differences in 30 years.”

The pond pines found in the refuge can tolerate wetter ground than the more familiar loblolly pines, but even pond pines can’t handle too much saltwater, he said. Older pond pines have died off along with members of other tree species, contributing to the ghost forests.

Saltwater intrusion, drier land and forest fires

The Alligator River refuge covers about 160,000 acres on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula in mainland Dare and Hyde counties. The refuge is bordered by the Albemarle Sound to the north, the Croatan Sound to the east and the Pamlico Sound to the south. The Alligator River — for which the refuge is named — cuts deeply into the western part of the land.

Emily Bernhardt, a Duke University professor, is leading a team of students who are studying the exact amount of land loss that sea level rise is causing and the habitat changes saltwater intrusion has prompted, Lanier said.

Bernhardt and two scientists from North Carolina State University spoke in a 10-minute video titled, “The Seeds of Ghost Forests,” which was published in May at sciencefriday.com.

Bernhardt explained that commercial farmers wanted to keep the land dry enough to grow corn, soybeans and other crops, so from the 1960s through the ’80s, they drained large swaths of forested wetlands with man-made canals and ditches. “Even though they were made to drain water off, they can do opposite,” she stated. “You can have storms that can push saltwater deep into the interior.”

Climate change causes more extreme weather patterns, such as stronger storms and more intense droughts. When droughts occur, the sounds get saltier, “in part because they’re evaporating and in part because they’re not getting fresh water off the landscape,” Bernhardt said in the video. This, like sea level rise, intensifies saltwater intrusion.

“The thing that’s actually happening is that salt is getting into a landscape and killing individual organisms, be they trees or microbes — so it’s actually happening at a very granular scale,” she said.

“The thing that’s actually happening is that salt is getting into a landscape and killing individual organisms, be they trees or microbes—so it’s actually happening at a very granular scale.”

Emily Bernhardt, Duke University

Drier land also contributes to the potential for raging forest fires.

These are different than the prescribed burning the Fish and Wildlife Service does about once a year on the Alligator River and Pea Island refuges. “Fire is a part of the life history of these pocosin forests,” Lanier said, and the habitats in the refuge need fires at different intervals.

But when people drain the forests, “fires can be catastrophic then.”

This has been seen already.

In 2011, the Pains Bay wildfire burned more than 45,000 acres, partly on southeastern refuge land and partly on the East Coast’s most active bombing range, which is located in the middle of the refuge, Lanier said. The fire shut down all operations on the bombing range, which the U.S. Air Force owns and the U.S. Navy also uses.

“It actually took Hurricane Irene to finally put it out,” Lanier recalled. “We ran into a period of drought and the peat soils were drained, water tables were low … we had a lightning strike and away (the fire) went.”

Contrast that with a fire prior to 2011, when a lightning strike set off a blaze in the refuge that burned out naturally after consuming 300 acres at most, Lanier said. “It behaved the way a pocosin fire should behave in a natural area.”

That’s because it was in the refuge’s most natural area, meaning it wasn’t ever ditched or drained, he said, noting the importance of restoring the refuge’s hydrology.

Pocosin is an Algonquin word for “swamp on a hill,” Lanier said. The pocosin forests have deep peat deposits — soils made of thick, decomposed plant matter built up over thousands of years that store huge amounts of carbon.

“Carbon contributes to global warming,” Debbie Crane, communications director for The Nature Conservancy, said in an email. “Peat soil is about 50 percent carbon.”

When the soil is dry, it emits carbon into the atmosphere, she explained. Rewetting the soil to restore the natural water patterns not only prevents that, but also prevents large-scale, damaging wildfires, which emit even more carbon.

A recent fire in the refuge, sparked by a lightning strike on July 3, sent a thick smoke cloud over much of Dare County and even the southern end of Currituck County.

The fire burned 160 acres until it was officially put out on July 10, according to Lanier. “It is normal for the refuge to experience natural-caused fires such as this when we go through dry periods,” he said. “All of the weather indices that we monitor were pointing to a high probability of a fire.”

Planning ahead

The Nature Conservancy was instrumental in helping the Fish and Wildlife Service acquire the refuge initially and remains a consistent partner.

“We know as the sea continues rising, that place out there is not only going to change, but we can potentially lose a good part of it.”

Scott Lanier, Manager, Alligator River and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuges.

The service, The Nature Conservancy and other conservationists are working with state agencies and any individuals interested in preserving wildlife to acquire lands located immediately west, and then farther west of the current refuge.

“We know as the sea continues rising, that place out there is not only going to change, but we can potentially lose a good part of it,” Lanier said. “We want to create corridors to link together, so as the sea rises, wildlife has a place to go.”

The refuge is home to a vast array of animals, including American alligators, neotropical migrant bird species, the endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and red wolves, “one of the most endangered mammals in the world,” Lanier noted.

It’s also home to one of the largest American black bear populations in the eastern U.S. “We probably have one bear per about 4 square miles,” Lanier said. Four square miles is 2,560 acres, so that’s more than 60 bears.

In the meantime, The Nature Conservancy helped design and install six water control structures and four ditch plugs in recent years. The water control structures allow water to drain off the refuge at a more natural rate and also prevent saltwater intrusion from taking place on “wind tides,” when a strong, steady wind pushes the sound up into the refuge. “When you have a hurricane, all bets are off,” Lanier noted.

Also, to help minimize the effects of wind tides and erosion caused from higher sound water levels, The Nature Conservancy built 1,400 feet of oyster reef on the refuge around Point Peter Road. That project began in 2010 and wrapped up earlier this year, Crane said.

The conservancy and refuge also partnered to help restore hydrology in the 40,000-acre bombing range. The Air Force uses the range for target practice, and although the bombs pilots drop are inert, “because of the kinetic energy when dropping them, it can still cause fires,” Lanier said.

He and other refuge employees hope that by experiencing the beauty of the refuge, people will realize its importance and want to help preserve it. Canoe tours are offered several days a week during the summer at a cost.

Dani Canning, a refuge summer intern, led a tour on July 18. She gave a brief overview of the refuge’s wildlife and explained how the refuge was typically the northernmost range for alligators, but with warming temperatures, they’ve recently been seen closer to the Virginia line.

Jasmine Paesmans participated in the tour with her husband Patrick Randour and their three daughters. They’re from Belgium, so she enjoyed the different scenery and was excited to spot a small green snake in the water while paddling.

“We don’t have this kind of park in Belgium; it’s too small,” Paesmans said. Their family and friends, also from Belgium, planned to hike a trail in the refuge immediately after the canoe tour.

“These pocosin wetlands offer incredible ecosystem services,” Lanier said. “They help with being a buffer with large storms like hurricanes, serve as filters for water and preserve water quality.”

WILMINGTON – Retired Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney does not sugarcoat it.

“Climate change is a national security threat,” he said.

His message aboard the Battleship North Carolina Tuesday took his audience on a verbal tour that spanned the globe and circled back to Wilmington, a city facing the effects of sea level rise and more frequent, stronger hurricanes.

“You’re where the rubber meets the road,” he said.

Cheney, chief executive of the American Security Project (ASP) think tank, explained that climate change is not the ultimate culprit of catastrophic weather.

It’s the carbon dioxide, or CO₂, in the atmosphere that is churning up storms like Hurricane Florence and record-breaking heat. The last five years have been the hottest in recorded history.

The shift in extreme weather has already began to leave its mark around the world.

“It’s an accelerant to instability,” Cheney said.

He pointed to countries like Syria, where Western policymakers argue extreme drought led to mass migration to the city of Aleppo, which led to socio-economic stresses that led into the country’s descent into a civil war.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, moved into eastern Syria in 2014 amidst the chaos of war and began gaining land and power.

On the African continent there’s Lake Chad, where the borders of Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria meet.

In the past 40 years there has been a 90 percent decline of the lake’s surface area.

“You’re where the rubber meets the road.”

Retired Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney

Boko Haram Islamists have taken advantage of the region’s fragility, recruiting impoverished farmers and fishermen and basing themselves on the lake’s islands.

“Climate change didn’t cause that, but you can see the domino effect,” Cheney said.

If CO₂ emissions continue to be emitted into the atmosphere at the current rate, in 20 to 30 years temperatures in Sub-Saharan Africa may reach 140 degrees, he said. Those temperatures will drive out some 20 to 30 million refugees likely to Europe, Cheney added.

One meter – a little more than 3 feet – of sea level rise in low-lying Bangladesh means that country will lose 20 percent of its coastal property and some 20 million residents displaced, he said.

“Can they house them and take care of them in Bangladesh,” Cheney asked.

Long term, the displaced will likely go somewhere else, he continued, telling his audience they can read the tea leaves and see how climate change will cause instability.

Back in the United States, military bases and stations along the coast are having to adapt to climate change.

At Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, the world’s largest naval station, ship piers are flooding, Cheney said.

Former Marine Corps Assistant Commandant Glenn Walters last year told a congressional committee that Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, needs a seawall to protect it against rising seas and repeated flooding.

At Camp Lejeune, where 30 miles of shoreline “are now threatened with sea level rise,” blue tarps are still draped over roofs damaged during Hurricane Florence, Cheney said.

That September 2018 storm left $3.6 billion worth of damage on the base.

“The Marine Corps didn’t budget for that,” Cheney said.

The storm displaced military families and interrupted the deployment of a battalion.

Further inland at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, so-called black flag days are becoming more frequent, Cheney said.

Black flags are raised when temperatures exceed 90 degrees and signal the suspension of physical training and exercise outdoors.

The aftermath of storms and high temperatures affect the military’s readiness to respond to missions, Cheney said.

“All of these bases and stations on the coast are having to adapt,” he said.

Cheney said ASP is in favor of all energy alternatives – natural gas, wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear.

The organizations goal is to take out the politics as it pushes for these alternatives.

North Carolina is second only to California in solar energy production.

North Carolina coastal counties and municipalities, including Wilmington, are beginning to take steps to prepare for sea level rise.

At the Battleship North Carolina, for example, staff are working with engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to deal with more frequent flooding.

Battleship executive director Capt. Terry Bragg briefly talked about the $2 million Living With Water plan, which will include living shorelines and tidal marsh restoration.

In early 2013, Wilmington released its community resilience pilot project.

Together with New Hanover County and the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, the city worked with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Sustainable Communities to identify ways to reduce the vulnerability of water and wastewater infrastructure to sea level rise and more intense coastal storms.

Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo said now is the time for leaders to step up and make investments to ensure the nation’s infrastructure is “flood ready.”

Cheney said it’s those types of initiatives that are going to make a difference.

“We are getting there,” he said. “You’re a prime example here of what the impact can be. You’re seeing the impact daily. What’s refreshing is your reaction to it.  Inside the beltway, it’s just a mud fight daily. We can do things to prevent it. We’re making headway, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

Installations that appear blue on the map above are those threatened by sea level rise and flooding, ones in red are threatened by excessive heat, orange designates drought and wildfire threat, green is flash flooding, and brown is coastal erosion. Each installation is categorized by the primary threat it faces, but that does not mean that bases face only one type of threat. Source: American Security Project

National parks on the North Carolina coast are some of the most threatened by rising seas in the nation, but in the context of wildfires, droughts, invasive species and excessive rain events plaguing the parks in the interior states, coastal woes are hardly the only problem the National Park Service is facing from climate change.

“The issue is challenging us like we’ve never been challenged before,” said Cat Hawkins Hoffman, the agency’s national adaptation coordinator, Climate Change Response Program.

“We have a whole bunch of historic structures that are highly vulnerable.”

Dave Hallac, Superintendent National Parks of Eastern North Carolina

A report the program released in May projected sea level rise for 118 park units and storm surge projections for 79 of those parks. Of those studied, the parks in the Southeast region, which includes North Carolina, were projected to be at risk of the highest storm surges. The Outer Banks parks were projected to experience the highest sea level rise by 2100.

But park managers at Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras national seashores have already taken steps to protect their parks from future impacts.

“This confirms to me that we ought to be paying a lot of attention to sea level rise,” said Dave Hallac, superintendent of National Parks of Eastern North Carolina. “The first thing we have done, even in advance of this report, we needed site-specific information. … We have a whole bunch of historic structures that are highly vulnerable.”

Curiously, the shoreline near Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills was named as the park threatened by the highest projected sea level rise. But of all the Outer Banks parks, it is the highest and driest. That is because the projection looked at the level of rising water, but did not look at local topography.

Hallac said it explains why park managers need to also tap all available data to understand how the local landscape will respond to storm surge and higher seas. To that end, a separate report done by Tom Allen, a geography professor and researcher at Old Dominion University, looked specifically at elevations and other details of historic buildings in Cape Hatteras National Seashore to help the park determine mitigation and proactive management strategies to protect resources.

“We learned that Bodie Island Lighthouse keepers’ quarters is one of the most threatened structures,” Hallac said. “That helps us prioritize.”

Similar studies have also been done to look at protection of cultural resources in Portsmouth Village and at the lighthouse village at Cape Lookout National Seashore.

Although sea level rise is an obvious stressor the park system has to address, Hawkins Hoffman said, the report – compiled mostly from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, GIS and the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data – can help managers assess the threat to their parks. More than a quarter of park units – and their resources – are in coastal regions, she added.

“That helps us hone, even more to focus, our efforts on areas that have the most exposure,” Hawkins Hoffman said in a recent interview. “This is high-level view that simply identifies where exposure is higher.”

Initially entangled in controversy about references to human factors in climate change, the final report does not dance around the accepted science behind the issue. Despite doubts about climate change expressed by some in the current administration, she said the National Park Service, where she has worked for 37 years, has not been obstructive and is moving forward to address the effects of climate change.

“We’re working with all the parks,” she said. “This administration does not have the same approach as the last administration, and that is life. Regardless of the approach, this issue is not going away. It is something we’ll be dealing with for decades, even centuries.”

Considering that cultural resources in 415 park units number in the tens of thousands, ranging from archaeological sites at Jamestown to the Statue of Liberty to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, all situated in locations under various levels of vulnerability exacerbated by climate change – wildfires, melting permafrost, flooding, insect infestation, algal blooms, intense storms, shoreline erosion, saltwater intrusion – the complexity of their protection can be overwhelming to contemplate.

Not to mention that the agency is also the designated steward of cultural resources through numerous programs including the National Register of Historic Places, the National Historic Landmark Program and American Battlefield Protection Program, among others.

“We are certainly aware of issues in the coastal zone,” said Marcy Rockman, climate change coordinator for cultural resources. “But then I am also very concerned and have been for some time with what is happening with the interior of the country.”

Rockman said there are about 95,000 archaeological sites, thousands of historic structures and hundreds of cultural landscapes – a combination of built and natural environments – identified nationally.

Rockman, currently the sole staff member overseeing cultural resources among the 15 or so staff in the agency’s Climate Change Response Program, said that the program is working with local park managers and academic and community partners to develop vulnerability assessments and a list of priorities for each park.

“I like to think about it as a big family, and all the kids need new shoes,” Rockman said. “We try to figure out which kid needs shoes first, and what type of shoe.”

The first pilot program is close to being completed at Cape Lookout, she said, and the goal is to tweak the model so it can utilized nationwide as a tool for park managers.

Coastal Review Online reached out to Cape Lookout Superintendent Jeff West, but he was on leave and could not be reached for comment.

Many park assets are experiencing threats, Rockman said, but determining which are most threatened is challenging because documentation is lacking to track changes.

How fast are changes happening? How is it changing? Is it moldy, crumbling, flooded, cracking? Sometimes changes are happening, but it takes a while to notice. For instance, one park’s annual lilac festival no longer coincided with the blooming of the lilacs.

Western Carolina University in Cullowhee is working with the park service on assessing vulnerability of park facilities, Rockman said. Subsequent studies are also planned to look at vulnerabilities of natural resources and cultural resources.

Even as debate is ongoing on what measures to take, when to take them and how to pay for them, Hawkins-Hoffman said the park service is working to coordinate the best approach to protect its resources in the future.

“We all need to be aware of the magnitude of this issue,” she said. “It’s so critical to be pulling together in a way that focuses on what people are experiencing, so we can work together on this issue as a community.”

Learn More

• Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy

NORTHEASTERN N.C. – Not quite two years ago, the heavens opened over a sandy strand of land wedged between ocean and sound, drowning yards and roads and buildings – everything – in an epic deluge. In a span of three days in September 2016, more than 13 inches of rain fell on Ocean Sands, a subdivision on the northern edge of the Outer Banks in Corolla.

And that was before Hurricane Matthew blew through the next month and dumped another 18 inches. Hurricane Maria dumped more rain on the saturated ground last year. Not to mention Ernesto and Joaquin before then.

“I had crabs in my cul-de-sac,” said Linda Garczynski, recalling her Ocean Sands neighborhood during one storm.

But it’s not just the increase in monsoon-like rains in recent years that is challenging coastal areas in North Carolina. As water tables are getting higher and shorelines on both ocean and sound sides are eroding faster, tidal flooding is getting worse.

According to a report released this month by the Union of Concerned Scientists, by 2045 more than 15,000 properties in North Carolina, currently home to about 23,000 residents and valued at about $4 billion, are at risk of chronic inundation – that is, 26 or more times per year.  Those properties, the report said, today contribute about $25 million in annual property tax revenue.

Accompanying the report online are interactive maps that show how many homes are at risk by state, community and ZIP code. The maps also show the current property value, estimated population, and the property tax base at risk.

In the lower 48 states, about 31,000 coastal homes with a market value totaling about $117.5 billion in today’s dollars will be subject to chronic flooding by 2045, the report said.

Thirty years from now, more than 700 commercial properties, today worth about $753 million, would also be plagued by frequent flooding, the report said. Valuable coastal property on the Outer Banks and northeastern North Carolina would be especially vulnerable, with about 2,000 homes combined in Nags Head and Hatteras at risk. Numerous communities with low wealth would have fewer resources to address the challenges. For instance, the overwhelming majority of homes in the tiny community of Alligator in Tyrrell County, one of the state’s poorest counties, would be exposed to frequent flooding.

The recent Union of Concerned Scientists report on the potential impact of sea level rise, using maps and data from, among others, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Zillow, a company that collects real estate data, is taking a deeper look into the potentially profound consequences of chronic tidal flooding impacts: increased property damage, loss of tax revenue, decreased property values, lower tax bases, flooded roads and bridges and dislocation of entire communities.

“We wanted to capture when sea level rise is going to cause such a disruption in people’s lives that they’ll make really dramatic changes,” said Erika Spanger-Siegfried, senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program.

Chronic tidal flooding, sometimes called nuisance flooding, is not new, but it’s starting to get more attention, especially in South Florida, she said.

In some places such as New Orleans and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, people have already made modest adjustments in their lives, such as having an alternate vehicle, one they don’t mind exposing to saltwater, to use on flooded days.

The goal of the report is to encourage communities to start talking about flooding before it becomes a constant crisis, Spanger-Siegfried said.

“This is not something an individual, or frankly a community, can cope with alone,” she said. “The critical thing is we need to know our risks and start to do things … in the time that we have before chronic flooding is really upon us.”

There are choices, depending on the degree of risk, that include the following:

• Defend – bulkheads, levies, living shorelines, beach nourishment, sea walls.
• Accommodate – buildings on pilings, bridged areas, no living quarters on ground floors.
• Retreat – relocate out of flood zones, move to higher ground or leave the area altogether.

“It gets hard when it comes to specifics, because each community is different,” she said. “That’s another reason to start to get a handle on the problem and begin to get ahead of the situation.”

In the process of gathering feedback earlier this year about stormwater flooding in Currituck County, Duke University graduate student Amber Halstead for her master’s thesis found that people’s perception of flooding risks correlates with their experience with flooding much more than the designation on flood maps. Although most people she spoke with recognize the value of flood insurance, she said some say they will drop flood insurance when the new flood maps go into effect because of the high cost.

In a recent telephone interview, Halstead said that about 500 people responded to an online survey and she spoke to others at several community meetings held throughout the county this past winter.

“I do think the majority of respondents do think the flooding is getting worse,” she said. “I don’t think they had specific solutions. They just know that something needed to happen.”

At Ocean Sands, the bowl-like typography of the neighborhood makes it even more subject to flooding than others in the barrier island community. But the challenge is not just that the deluges seem to be more frequent and intense. It’s also that there are more impermeable surfaces and the water table is higher.

Ocean Sands, one of the oldest subdivisions in Corolla, is working with the county and an engineering firm to develop a long-term storm management plan.

“There’s a lot of construction, a lot of cement,” said Larry Landrum, an Ocean Sands homeowner. It’s the over-building. Everybody wants to live on the Outer Banks.”

Front page featured photo of the oceanfront in Nags Head after Hurricane Matthew turned offshore, Oct. 9, 2016, by Catherine Kozak.

BEAUFORT – Digital Coast — a website filled with data, and the tools and training to help make sense of the data — was created to help communities in coastal zones approach a range of challenges such as sea level rise and storms.

Adam Bode, senior geospatial analyst and regional coordinator for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management based in Charleston, South Carolina, led in October a daylong NOAA Tools Training, the first of its kind, at the NOAA Fisheries Beaufort Lab to help coastal management professionals learn more about the website and how it can help them.

The multi-faceted website is organized in sections: About, Data, Tools, Training, Topics and Stories.

“It’s a mixed bag of different tools, trainings, webinars and resources meant to help you step through and better understand natural infrastructure and other topics that we have on the Digital Coast,” Bode said.

Bode said during the training session that what sets Digital Coast apart from other one-stop shop information portals is that “we’re really focused on aggregating and collecting, collating resources really meant for the coastal zone management community.”

The Digital Coast was first released in 2007 and is managed by NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management. Bode said that the office works with partners to try to provide unbiased, relevant information and tools.

“More than just data” is a slogan for Digital Coast, Bode continued, because, while data is the foundation of Digital Coast, there are also training resources, access to tools and a variety of other ready-to-use resources covering a number of different topics, all structured around the needs and input of the users.

Digital Coast houses more than 70 terabytes of data, including high-resolution elevation data, land cover data and orthoimagery, or remotely-sensed aerial photography that has been geometrically corrected or adjusted for lens distortion and other aberrations.

“Tools is another main section of our website,” Bode said, adding that providing access to curated lists of tools is the goal. There are more than 50 different tools that can be filtered, categorized based on geography and topic of interest.

“Another core component of the website is our training,” Bode explained. There are scheduled trainings that are instructor-led, online and mixed delivery, which is a combination of webinar with some hands-on training as a follow-up.

In addition to scheduled courses, there are on-demand learning products that include a variety of self-guided resources, case studies, 47 publications, a number of quick references and the video and webinar sections are continuously being expanded.

There are currently 10 topics in the Topics section, including adaptation strategies, natural infrastructure and vulnerability assessments, with plans to add more in the future, Bode said.

“The overall general approach taken with the Digital Coast is that it gets people the foundational data and resources that they need,” he said.

Bode recommended visiting Tips for First-Time Users as well as the frequently asked questions, or FAQs, on the main page of Digital Coast for those who are new to the website.

Bode said in an interview after the training session that the training at the NOAA Lab exceeded expectations.

“The size and diverse nature of the attendees provided a great opportunity for NOAA to work with and hear from our target audiences. Attendees appreciated the hands-on format, which elicited great discussions. We look forward to extending this type of training to others within the state and region,” he said.

Bode said that the website was developed to meet the unique needs of those who make decisions about coastal resources, including town planners, developers and coastal conservation groups, to name a few.

“Content on the site comes from many sources, but being relevant to this audience is the requirement. The Digital Coast Partnership, which is made up of user groups such as the American Planning Association and the National Association of Counties, helps ensure this relevance, providing user insight and feedback,” he said.

Bode said that while designed for specific issues and audiences, the public will find many Digital Coast resources to be helpful. “They should check out the Stories from the Field section of the website. Here, nearly 140 examples of how Digital Coast resources help coastal communities can be found. A handout about North Carolina and the most used Digital Coast resources for this state is also available.”

Examples of Stories from the Field include New Jersey engaging communities in hazard mitigation planning through the use of vulnerability assessment tools as well as planners along Florida’s Gulf Coast using the Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Impacts Viewer data to help identify the effects of shoreline armoring on seagrass habitats.

Those new to the site should also visit the Digital Coast Academy, Bode added. “This section contains nearly 200 resources, from in-person training to quick references guides and videos, all designed to help people understand their coast and make better decisions about the future of their coast. After all, that’s what the Digital Coast is all about – making the right decisions about the future of our nation’s coasts.”

Whitney Jenkins, coastal training program coordinator with the North Carolina Coastal Reserve & National Estuarine Research Reserve, coordinated the training session with Bode and Jennifer Dorton, who at the time was with the North Carolina Sentinel Site Cooperative, part of a NOAA effort to provide coastal communities and resource managers with information on the potential impacts of sea level rise on coastal habitats. The North Carolina site encompasses Carteret County and parts of Onslow and Craven counties.

Jenkins said, “The Reserve was very excited to bring this opportunity to coastal North Carolina professionals to showcase the resources NOAA has developed to support coastal management. A big thank you to Adam Bode with NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management for leading the training and the N.C. Sentinel Site Cooperative for sponsoring this event.”

Learn More

• NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management Digital Coast

RALEIGH — “Bottom line is we should not be building big buildings next to the beach.”

These were the words of Orrin Pilkey, an expert on coastal geology, during a panel discussion at a community forum on the effects of sea level rise on North Carolina last week. Pilkey and other panelists voiced strong opinions on how little state and local officials are doing to adapt to and prevent damage from sea level rise in the coming decades.

The forum, “Rising Seas: How will climate change affect the NC Coast?,” was part of a Community Voices series hosted by The News & Observer and WTVD-TV of Raleigh. The discussion took place at the North Carolina Museum of History on the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 27.

In addition to Pilkey, professor emeritus of earth and ocean sciences at Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, panelists included the following:

• Astrid Caldas, senior climate scientist with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
• Stanley R. Riggs, professor of geology at East Carolina University.
• Greg “Rudi” Rudolph, Carteret County shore protection officer and a member of the Coastal Resources Commission’s science panel.
• Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Ned Barnett, an opinion column and blog contributor at The News & Observer, moderated the panel. Barnett noted at the beginning of the forum that the panel included no climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science.

“We cannot devote the little time we have tonight to a debate that there is even a problem to discuss,” he said.

Barnett emphasized the topic of sea level rise is relevant to the state and not talked about enough.

“The rise can seem too small to matter, a few inches a decade,” he said, “but that rise becomes more ominous when we consider that it is relatively new, starting around 1800, that it is accelerating, and that its effects can be compounded by the other consequences of global warming, heavier rainfall and more powerful storms.”

A report released in July by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization Caldas said jokingly calls itself the union of pissed-off scientists, found that some coastal regions, which currently only see a few floods a year, will likely see frequent and destructive floods in coming decades.

“Science is telling us that lots of localized floods are going to occur in the near term,” Caldas said, “and that substantial areas are going to become part of the tidal zone in the long term.”

She said that the research projected that Wilmington will go from experiencing a few tidal floods a year to as many as 150 by 2035. By 2045, the number of floods may be in excess of 350. She added that Duck is projected to see about 30 flooding events by 2035, and that the water will cover extensive expanses of land. By 2045, she said, Duck may see up to 150 extensive floods annually.

One of the biggest problems, Caldas said, will be the effect of this phenomenon on poor and minority communities, who feel the effects by sea level rise in different ways. Vulnerable communities, she said, tend to live in distant areas. Flooding on roads can make it difficult to get to resources and to their jobs.

“Many socially, economically vulnerable communities are at the frontlines of this whole mess, with very few resources to cope,” she said.

Rudolph said that people in poor agricultural communities are also vulnerable to sea level rise as they may not be able to afford increasingly expensive flood insurance premiums.

“They’re in the flood zones,” he said, “if not, they’re going to be. Premiums going up because of storms. I see that as a big socioeconomic crisis, and it’s going to impact North Carolina hard.”

Pilkey said that the scientific consensus is that sea level will likely rise 3 feet by the end of the century and possibly another 6 inches, depending on the behavior of the west Antarctic ice sheet. In theory, he said, a foot of sea level rise could create 2,000 feet of shoreline retreat, or as much as 10,000 feet along parts of the Outer Banks.

“Which means that 1 foot of sea level rise could bring the shoreline back 2 miles,” he said regarding the Outer Banks.

As sea level rises, Riggs said the coast is becoming increasingly vulnerable to storm surges, but that society must develop new economies around the natural dynamics. Storms are a part of life, he said, and we must learn to live in harmony with them.

Natural approaches to storm management are still possible in North Carolina, as only half of the state’s coast is developed, Rudolph said.

“There’s a huge what’s called opportunity,” he said, “to advance a mixture of natural flood management, living shorelines and new infrastructure.”

The panel supported the idea that preventing damage from sea level rise should be done sooner rather than waiting until after a devastating event.

“Don’t expect enlightened policymaking in the aftermath of a storm,” Miller said, “everybody’s attention at that point is on recovery.”

Pilkey said that he believes that after 2 feet of sea level rise, beach re-nourishment will no longer be possible, leaving communities with two choices: Move buildings back or build a seawall. The best we can do now, he said, is to stop building large structures that cannot be moved.

As for people who are interested in owning coastal property, Riggs said a lack of information may make them vulnerable to make risky purchases.

“Let’s at least require some statements on a deed that’s out there in the high-hazard areas,” Riggs said, “so a person who’s not familiar knows what they’re buying into.”

Panel members expressed frustration at the gap between science and policy, with Pilkey saying the Coastal Resources Commission appears to be doing everything it can to promote development on the state’s coast.

Riggs referred to the 2010 sea level rise report produced by the CRC science panel, which predicted 39 inches of rise during the next century. The North Carolina General Assembly famously rejected the report, prompting nationwide attention and late-night TV jokes about the state “outlawing climate change,” and the panel was instructed to create a new report in 2015 that looked only 30 years into the future.

Riggs resigned from the panel in 2016, saying “I believe the once highly respected and effective science panel has been subtly defrocked and is now an ineffective body.”

He said during the panel discussion that education is key to putting pressure on policymakers to use science to craft coastal management policies.

“If we don’t have an educated public, we’ll never get off the ground with any of this,” Riggs said.

Reprinted from the Tideland News

Audubon North Carolina recently announced two new programs the organization says can help the state’s birds survive as the effects of climate change become more severe.

Curtis Smalling, director of conservation for Audubon North Carolina, said the two programs – Climate Strongholds and Climate Watch – offer ways for state agencies, nonprofit conservation groups and, of course, individual property owners, to make a difference.

In addition, Smalling said, involvement in such bird-related programs and efforts can serve as vehicles to make people more aware of climate change issues in general, and more likely to try to influence public policies that can hurt or help not only birds, but also the crucial ecosystems that those birds – and people – rely upon.

Heather Hahn, Audubon NC executive director, said the effects of climate change on birds are already noticeable.

“We’re already seeing birds shift where they can live due to changes in weather brought about by climate change, with 60 percent of our wintering birds spending their time further north than just 40 years ago,” she said. “We are starting the (new programs) now to identify and protect valuable land and habitat that birds will need in the future to survive and thrive. It’s critical that our birds always have a place here in North Carolina.”

Climate Strongholds

Smalling and Hahn said data gleaned from the 2014 Audubon Birds and Climate Change Report have allowed Audubon scientists to identify five regions of North Carolina where birds are expected to seek sanctuary from the effects of our changing climate. These “climate strongholds” can offer the right mix of temperature and precipitation needed to support a wide diversity of birds now and into the future.

Climate strongholds represent regions of the state that are expected to retain suitable climate conditions required by climate-threatened birds with diverse habitat needs. Audubon NC Climate Stronghold regions include the Blue Ridge Mountains, Capital-Piedmont (greater Raleigh), Roanoke and Chowan Rivers Bottomlands, and the Southern Coastal Plain. Audubon modeled an additional “Coastal Stronghold,” to identify which existing Important Bird Areas, zones deemed important for conservation of bird populations, are most threatened by sea-level rise.

“For the first time, we’re able to apply data to predict where birds will move as the climate changes,” Smalling said. “Knowing where birds are likely to move in response to climate change will guide future bird conservation in North Carolina, and we’ll need lots of partners to be successful and will assist our partners in protecting land and managing bird habitat in the state.”

Working from this future blueprint for conservation planning, Audubon NC will prioritize work with partners to conserve natural areas within these climate strongholds, manage forests in a bird-friendly way and grow bird-friendly native plants to protect our most climate-threatened birds.

Smalling said examples include working with organizations such as the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust or the North Carolina Coastal Federation to preserve critical habitat, and working with state and federal agencies to help make good decisions. He called it a “no-regrets” approach, since the same conservation efforts and policies that can help birds also help the environment.

The coastal climate stronghold, Smalling said, may be facing even more immediate threats than most of the other strongholds, in part because not only is the weather changing, sea level is rising, inundating marshes and reducing flat, sandy beach areas that serve as habitat for shorebirds.

But Smalling stressed that it’s not just up to conservation groups and government agencies. In fact, he said, there are countless meaningful, although seemingly small, ways for property owners to help.

A big way is to rely, as much as possible, on native plants in landscaping.

Smalling said a native oak tree supports 600 insect species, whereas a non-native crepe myrtle supports only three. That makes a huge difference to birds, many of which rely overwhelmingly on insects for food.

Another way is to plant-bird friendly species in gardens. People can also try to reduce bird-window collisions, particularly in urban areas, but keeping lights off at nights. And people everywhere can do birds a big favor by keeping cats inside as much as possible.

Again, he stressed, birds can be a good entry point for conservation in general.

When “people feel like they can actually do something that makes a difference,” he said, they start taking personal responsibility, and personal responsibility can and often does lead to advocacy, things like contacting local officials and legislators and urging them to take steps that help habitat, as well as urging them not to take steps that result in habitat destruction.

Examples of policy decisions include beach nourishment and the use of groins or bulkheads to slow erosion along the coast. In that sense, it’s not just climate change that threatens birds and habitat, but man’s response to climate change. Such hardening of the coast reduces habitat, whereas living shorelines can slow erosion and preserve or even create habitat.

One of the goals, Smalling said, is to simply make people more aware of the threats climate change poses. Sometimes these changes aren’t obvious.

For example, people may say, “I still see birds” on the beach, but might not notice that their numbers are lower than in the past, or that they are around at different times, or not around for the same length of time.

Climate change has always happened, he noted, but the “pace seems different now,” and one of the goals of climate strongholds is to slow the effects of those changes enough to give birds more of an opportunity to adapt, as organisms have always done.

Climate Watch

The Climate Watch effort is a program that builds upon more than 100 years of Audubon “citizen science” to track and document the health of bird populations. It aims to track the response of individual bird species to climate change to inform future conservation planning.

Audubon recently announced that its 2014 Birds and Climate Change report revealed three species of North Carolina nuthatches – red-breasted, white-breasted and brown-headed – that are among 170 bird species in the state whose ranges are expected to shift and significantly shrink because of a changing climate.

In the program, volunteer Audubon members and other lay scientists count nuthatches during two observation periods, Jan. 15-30 and June 1-15. The volunteers then report their data to a national database for analysis.

“Projects like this one keep the ledger of how birds are being affected by climate change,” said Kim Brand, Audubon NC field organizer. “Over time we’ll be able to see how bird populations respond to climate change and adjust our conservation strategies accordingly.”

Learn More

• Climate Strongholds
• Climate Watch
• Audubon North Carolina

This story is provided courtesy of the Tideland News, a weekly newspaper in Swansboro. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Tideland to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast. You can read other stories about the Swansboro area here.

David Salvesen understands the power of film. As a researcher at the University of North Carolina who studies and teaches sustainable land use, he didn’t set out to become a documentarian. But he wanted to learn why public opinion doesn’t always coincide with the consensus among the scientists about the effects of climate change.

“It’s a pretty sizeable group that doesn’t believe in it,” he said. “And many scientists are kind of attacked for their position on climate change.”

So Salvesen turned to people who work outside and recorded their personal experiences with the land and water around them. The result is “Climate Stories NC,” a series of short videos that feature beekeepers, Christmas tree growers, fishermen and conservationists. Each is a first-person account of work and life.

“These interviews are based on their own observations,” he said.

One subject, G. Richard Mode of Morganton, said he believed that “climate change was something Al Gore cooked up in his basement.” But as he got older he watched how warming temperatures altered his beloved hobbies – trout fishing and duck hunting. Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, a third-generation beekeeper, discusses the decline in honeybee populations and how the changing climate and shorter spring seasons disrupt her hives.

On the coast, Willy Phillips is owner of the Full Circle Crab Co. Inc. in Columbia and offers a fisherman’s perspective to the series. He’s been active in water quality and other issues for many years and was also on the state Marine Fisheries Commission.

“People are always trying to advance an agenda of one kind or another, he said. “But this is just common sense observation.”

He’s also willing to talk about these issues, because he’s more outspoken than many fisherman are because of his time in the public sphere.

“When you live in the swamp, like we do, things change fast,” he said. “It’s pretty dramatic, the changes we’ve seen in just a generation. We’re on the front lines. We’re on the cutting edge of this experiment we’re conducting with nature.”

Salvesen is the director of UNC’s Institute for the Environment’s Sustainable Triangle Field Site, which focuses on issues and challenges related to sustainable cities and urban planning.

“I don’t really have experience with film,” he said.  “I’ve learned it’s actually very complicated to produce these short films.”

He’s working with editor John Wilson and videographer Warren Gentry to shoot the interviews and background footage, and he is spending hours editing the video packages.  Salvesen received a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation for “Climate Stories NC.”

Right now, a handful of videos are available online and Salvesen expects to have as many as 18 of them edited and posted by the end of the summer. Many of the segments are short, less than four minutes long.

“I wanted to make them available to environmental groups and organizations that do advocacy,” he said. “Most of the groups I reached out to said that shorter is better.”

So far, he’s hosted two screenings and discussions but hopes to add more to his calendar in the coming months. The idea is for people to watch them when and where they can to further the conversation about how climate is affecting lives in North Carolina.

“The people’s consciousness on these issues has evolved quicker than the leadership’s,” Phillips said.

Because they see what is happening, Phillips and other fishermen are more ready to ask questions about things like sea-level rise and policy changes. And he believes that film is a tool that can help bring about these important discussions.

“I think it’s really the only way to approach a majority of the population,” he said.

Willie Phillips, a fisherman and fish dealer in Columbia, talks about the changes he and other fishermen have seen related to climate change.

When plans were made more than 20 years ago to place a hazardous waste incinerator in his county of a few hundred residents, it was difficult to build a consensus against it – until they placed a TV set in front of the grocery store and played videos of people discussing the issue. “Within a few days, the commissioners were forced to reject the plan.”

The ability to film and show films about these issues across platforms both new and traditional is powerful. “It’s a wonderful thing,” Phillips said. “And it’s a wonderful thing to show people what we do.”

The power of a picture is also being used to remind people about the possible effects of offshore drilling.  Screenings of “Shore Stories,” are meant to show local audiences how communities around the world have been affected by offshore drilling. The Atlantic Ocean has been taken out of the federal proposal for new offshore oil and gas leases for the time being, but there is still more to do.

“I hope the movie will galvanize people,” said Mike Giles, coastal advocate with the N.C. Coastal Federation. “It’s something we still need to be concerned about.”

To Learn More

• Climate Stories NC

Reprinted from N.C. Health News

At a recent hearing in Raleigh, residents called on state officials to adopt a strong response to climate change and argued that such a response would have large benefits for North Carolinians’ health.

The hearing held Dec. 17 allowed residents to comment on North Carolina’s response to the federal Clean Power Plan. That plan, finalized Aug. 3 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seeks to limit the U.S.’s contribution to climate change.

It does so by requiring states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from their power sectors, in part by reducing the use of coal-fired power plants.

This reduction in coal power would offer several benefits for the public’s health, the EPA estimates. Coal-fired power plants not only produce carbon dioxide, they also emit air pollutants with more immediate health effects. These include nitrogen oxides, which contribute to the formation of smog, and sulfur dioxide, which can form fine particles that damage human lungs.

Under the Clean Power Plan, each state can craft its own plan in order to meet minimum federal requirements. North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality has done just that.

But in the public hearing, residents and health advocates berated state officials for the plan they drafted. Several speakers argued that the plan should be more protective of the public’s health.

“The effect of greenhouse gases, leading to a change in climate, impacts our health through degraded air quality, wildfires, drought, heat waves and more,” said Alison Jones, a project manager for Mothers and Others for Clean Air, a program of the American Lung Association. “We need a strong Clean Power Plan in place for North Carolina to cut carbon pollution and lessen the burden on the health of our citizens.”

Other speakers echoed these concerns.

“Climate change raises the ambient temperatures and makes air pollution worse, impacting our lung function, our circulation and our immunity,” said Manijeh Berenji, an assistant professor at Duke University’s school of medicine. “This phenomenon affects all of us, but especially the young, the old, the poor and the ill.”

Why it’s limited

North Carolina environment officials say they drafted a limited response to the EPA’s rule. The current state plan only requires efficiency improvements in the state’s coal-fired power plants, not at plants powered by natural gas, a cleaner-burning fuel source.

In September 2015, North Carolina produced 3.2 gigawatt-hours of electricity from natural gas-fired plants. The state produced 3.14 gigawatt-hours from nuclear power and 3.12 gigawatt-hours from coal.

The EPA’s rule envisions a national move toward less carbon-intensive sources of energy, such as natural gas and wind energy.

But North Carolina’s environment officials say there’s a reason they drafted such a limited response. The EPA’s Clean Power Plan, they argue, is legally unsound. According to state officials, the EPA issued the rule under a flawed reading of the federal Clean Air Act, the law that sets national standards for air quality.

“The proposal approved Nov. 5 to go to public notice and hearing is the only choice for DEQ and the Environmental Management Commission to submit a legally viable plan,” Charlie Carter, a member of the state’s Environmental Management Commission, wrote in an op-ed for the News & Observer.

At the same time, North Carolina joined 24 other states in a lawsuit that aims to prevent the rule’s implementation.

Environmental groups and others at the public hearing criticized this approach and said that it neglects the large health benefits that North Carolinians stand to gain from the Clean Power Plan.

Yet pinpointing these potential health effects in North Carolina can be difficult. Academic research has limited information on the subject. And though the EPA says that its plan would reduce air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, the agency didn’t estimate the health benefits of these reductions in North Carolina.

Even without the Clean Power Plan, North Carolina will continue to reduce its carbon emissions, according to a former state environment official.

State policies already on the books “have North Carolina on a path to achieve much (if not all) of the necessary reductions through increased renewable energy generation, greater energy efficiency, and transition of power plants from coal to natural gas,” Robin Smith, who served as an assistant secretary for the environment from 1999 to 2012, wrote in a blog post.

But Smith still questioned DEQ’s plan. The limited plan – focused entirely on coal plants’ efficiencies – doesn’t take advantage of the state’s existing resources, she added.

“A state with significant advantages in renewable energy, energy efficiency and already on the road to transitioning power plants from coal to natural gas seems to have settled on a policy that throws those advantages away,” Smith wrote.

Next steps

The fate of the Clean Power Plan in North Carolina depends on several moving parts.

• A possible lawsuit victory. North Carolina could prevail in its federal lawsuit, along with other states. The Clean Power Plan could be ruled illegal, which would free North Carolina from having to comply with its requirements.
• A possible lawsuit loss. On the other hand, the states may lose their suits, and the EPA would be allowed to continue implementing its plan.
• A federal takeover. If the EPA can go forward with the Clean Power Plan, it may decide that North Carolina’s plan is inadequate. EPA has the power to overrule state agencies, and it could implement its own plan throughout North Carolina.
• A backup plan. To prevent this kind of federal takeover, state environment officials say they are also developing a backup plan.
• The deadlines. States must submit at least their initial plans to EPA by Sept. 6.
• A new president and partners in Congress. The Clean Power plan is a slow-moving development, with 2030 as its final target for emissions reductions. Between now and then, Congress could pass legislation intended to nullify the rule. It has already done so, though President Obama vetoed the legislation. But with a new ally in the White House, that legislation could become law.

North Carolina residents can continue to weigh in on the debate. The Raleigh hearing was the second of its kind, and the N.C. Environmental Management Commission is holding a third hearing on the plan in Wilmington on Jan. 5. Residents can also comment in writing on the rules until Jan. 15.

This story is provided courtesy of N.C. Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with N.C. Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast. You can read other stories about health care here.

Learn More

• Clean Power Plan
• N.C. response
• Charlie Carter’s News & Observer column

PARIS – It’s not surprising that there was no mention of North Carolina at an international climate conference attended by 40,000 people from every corner of the world.

But the landmark agreement reached two weeks ago at the 21^st United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP21, presents an opportunity for North Carolina to make the most of an inevitable push toward more renewable energy and less fossil fuels.

Rows of public art pillars at the conference entrance, each decorated with a different national flag, effectively illustrated the sense of unity in the global mission to stem global warming. Inside the cavernous center, people hurried in and out of huge buildings on either side of a corridor decorated with bright plastic animal sculptures and rock-filled cage planters. At the far end stood an art deco version of the Eiffel Tower, which on closer look were skillfully stacked rust-colored metal chairs.

The accord signed by 195 nations is intended to cut greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are dangerously warming the planet. The long-term goal is to keep temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celcius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, when the most destructive consequences would happen.

Although critics of the climate pact warn of negative economic effects, proponents say that it’s more likely to create stronger carbon markets, in which North Carolina currently does not participate.

“The unsung hero of the agreement,” wrote Nat Keohane, an economist with the Environmental Defense Fund, “is a set of provisions that encourages the use of markets to drive up investment in clean energy and drive down pollution.”

According to Keohane, EDF’s vice president for international climate, there are already functioning emissions-trading systems in more than 50 locations that are home to a total of nearly 1 billion people.

“The role of markets may not be in this week’s headlines,” he continued, “but a decade from now, it will be one of the enduring legacies of Paris.”

Although he was not speaking for North Carolina, Brian Murray, director for economic analysis at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, sees reasons to be optimistic about the state.

Murray, one of the world’s experts on carbon trading, had attended the Paris conference and participated in a panel discussion on cap-and-trade economics. He was accompanied in Paris by a group of Duke graduate students who observed the negotiations.

“North Carolina has cut its coal use down in the last decade, thanks to the Clean Smokestacks rule,” Murray said during an interview at the conference.

Murray said that the state’s renewable energy portfolio has encouraged the state’s growth in green power.

Along with natural gas, he said, solar and wind energy are replacing coal power in the state, and across the U.S. About a decade ago, coal produced about 50 percent of the power in the country. Now, Murray said, coal accounts for less than 40 percent of U.S. energy production, and there are no plans anywhere to build new coal units. The same percentages apply in North Carolina, he said.

North Carolina is one of 24 states challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan that calls for reductions in carbon emissions from power plants.

North Carolina is in the process of developing a state plan to meet the Clean Power Plan requirement, Murray said. Meanwhile, he said, he has been involved in an “information-sharing process” among Southeast states where they support and learn from each other in developing clean power.

But on Friday, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality doubled down on its “all of the above” energy policy in a statement that lauded oil and gas projects and the state joining in the lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan.

Republicans in general are not supportive of President Obama’s pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 28 percent below 2005 levels over the next 10 years, and 80 percent by 2050.

As it turns out, the only naysayers in Paris were at the conservative think tank Heartland Institute’s “Day of Examining the Data” conference held on Dec. 7 and featuring a video keynote address from Sen.. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and presentations by climate change skeptics from the U.S., Europe and Canada. They contend that doomsday climate forecasts are exaggerated and reduction of fossil fuel usage would hurt economic growth.

But the Heartland event was largely ignored, with several media outlets reporting little more than two dozen attendees.

With or without the backing of state and federal policies, however, businesses can successfully participate in the carbon market, said Hunter Parks, president of Green Assets in Wilmington.

Parks, who also attended the Paris conference, said that his farm, Mattamuskeet Ventures in Hyde County, became the first Avoided Conversion Carbon Offset Forestry project in the country. That means by not converting a percentage of his forested land to farmland, his company was able to get credits for keeping the carbon in trees instead of the atmosphere.

The company developed a similar carbon offset project on Lukens Island in Carteret County.

Park, who has worked with the N.C. Coastal Federation on stormwater projects, said he has obtained carbon credits from the California carbon market, which generated more than $1 billion in revenue in 2013. California passed the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006 that called for a reduction in its greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020, with one-third of energy coming from renewable sources.  A byproduct of the law was creation of a cap-and-trade program.

A project anywhere in the U.S. can create carbon offsets for that program, he said.

“So those are credits that can be generated and sold.”

One potential benefactor in North Carolina could be hog farms, which create enormous quantities of methane-producing hog waste. Conversion of the waste is costly, he said, but carbon offsets, along with some private incentives, could make it affordable.

“What’s going on here,” Parks said in an interview in Paris, “if it creates momentum for carbon policy throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world, opportunities for hog farms in North Carolina could generate carbon credits and reduce CO₂.”

“It’s not the cheapest way to manage the waste,” he added, “so a stronger market would help with that.”

Parks and Murray both noted the richness of the networking opportunities at the conference, where every sector having to do with anything related to carbon or emissions negotiations was there.

Relatively few of the attendees were dealing directly with the global negotiations, Murray said. “Even though we’re at an international negotiating conference, people come here and talk about domestic policies that are going on,” he said. “So this is a place where you essentially exchange information.”

The overriding tone of the conference was that the fossil fuel economy is in the rear-view mirror. Between exhibits on ocean environments, agriculture, social justice, animal welfare, fisheries, renewable energies, micro-grids and innovative clean technologies, the message was optimistic that the world, working toward the same goal, could save the future from the worst effects of a warming planet.

A panel of representatives from the Pacific Coast Collaborative, which includes members from the U.S. and Canadian West Coast, encouraged other local and state governments to take advantage of robust carbon markets.

“The science tells us the way you drive down those emissions is continually driving up that carbon price,” said Mary Polak, minister of environment for British Columbia.

Their GDP went up much faster than anywhere else in Canada, she said.  Emissions went down; consumption of fuel went down.

“We’ve seen the positive impacts,” Polak said. “We know that it works.”

In a typical California jab to the East Coast, California Gov. Jerry Brown boasted that West Coasters “intrinsically understand” that clean energy is “one of the greatest job-creating opportunities.”

“We’re open for business on the Pacific coast,” Brown said. “We’re rocking and we’re leading the charge. On the West Coast, we live our innovation.”

Although the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cooperative of nine Northeastern states – New Jersey pulled out in 2011 – and eastern Canada, works to reduce emissions from the electric power sector, it has limited scope and has no members from the Southeastern states.

“It’s true, there are still a lot of people, particularly in the chamber, who pooh-poohs climate change,” Brown said, despite his state’s twin plagues of drought and fire. “So it’s a real thing and it’s unfortunate that some people got it in their head that climate change is a left idea. All that connotes government regulation – the ideology is climate change is bad.”

Brown said a solid agreement from Paris may encourage more economic development from green energy policies “and I think that idea will get through to these knuckleheads.”

Michael Mann, director of Penn State University’s Earth Systems Science Center, has long been at the forefront of scientific research into climate change and its causes, putting him squarely at the center of debate that has swirled around the issue.

His work has been heavily praised by colleagues and attacked by politicians. His studies on human’s influence on greenhouse gasses resulted in the now infamous “hockey stick” graph, which raised alarms about the unchecked emissions that release those gasses in the atmosphere.

In his most-recent book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (2012, Columbia University Press), Mann looked at the growth of consensus on climate change and human activity and the politics and special interests that drive attempts to disprove it.

At a recent workshop on climate change in Beaufort, Mann talked with Coastal Review Online about the potential effects of climate change on the N.C. coast, arguing that it is time to get past debating long-settled science and focus on solutions, especially ways to be more resilient in the face of the changes ahead.

When it comes to climate change and sea-level rise what do you see as the big overarching issues on the N.C. coast? What’s really jumped out at you at this conference and during your other visits to the state?

Mann: Just the vulnerability, the very large amount of coastline here, where there are large populations of people who have lived here for several generations. It’s part of their history. It’s part of their culture and that’s fundamentally threatened now by sea-level rise, by the increasing intensity of hurricanes that strike our coastlines. It really sort of brings it home. This is where the rubber meets the road. I’m a climate scientist. I go around talking about the science, I talk about the impacts often in a theoretical framework, but here is where you really see it playing out.

At the workshop, we’ve looked at living shorelines and other mitigation strategies for sea-level rise. Do you see some rays of hope that there are ways North Carolina can cope with sea level rise?

Mann: Yeah. I think it’s still quite clear that if you look at the best science we have now about the climate changes that have happened, the sea-level rise that has taken place and the sea- level rise that may continue to take place in response to the greenhouse gasses that we’ve already put into the atmosphere, we’re going to be dealing with a certain amount of climate change, we’re going to be dealing with a certain amount of global warming and a certain amount of additional sea-level rise.

Right now, the projected changes that we are committed to still fall within the range of what we can view as our ability to cope, our adaptive capacity. We have a certain level of resilience and there are ways, [such as] living coastlines, that we can manage our coastlines to increase our resiliency and provide some degree of protection against the changes that we’re already committed to.

The real problem is if we don’t do something about the problem, if we don’t do something to stem the tide and lower our carbon emissions and turn the corner. Then, if you look at the projections of several feet of sea-level rise, that starts to take us outside of that range of adaptation, the range of what we can adapt to and what other living things and what the ecosystem can adapt to.

So we face a critical decision now. Our future is still in our hands. Our destiny is in our hands. Are we going to embrace a renewable energy future, where we keep climate change, global warming and sea-level rise within a copable range or do we exceed that range? It’s up to us.

When you think about this state and some of its challenges — hurricanes, storm surge — and the change in policy direction from an emphasis on renewables to an emphasis on fossil fuels and potential offshore drilling what goes through your mind?

Mann: Well, naturally it’s disappointing. There’s been a remarkable transition underway around the rest of the globe. You see counties like China and India embracing the renewable energy future. The rest of the world has recognized that this is the direction. The growth industry of the 21st Century is going to be green energy and the rest of the world is moving in that direction. It’s unfortunate that in some places here in the U.S., we’re moving in the wrong direction and we’re falling behind in terms of our competitiveness.

Just a few years ago, North Carolina was a leader in solar and the development of wind. My understanding is that the majority of folks in North Carolina are not happy with that change in direction. Those decisions have been made at the highest levels of state government, but my understanding is that change in direction isn’t popular with the citizens of North Carolina. My hope is that that means we’ll see a shift in the wind, so to speak, in the near future and a return to embracing the direction the rest of the world is moving in terms of renewable energy.

Michael Mann discusses climate change’s effects now and in the future.

You have taken a lot of hits. There’s been a lot of blowback on your work. Is there still room for questioning the science on climate change or do we now have enough information to get beyond that?

Mann: The world’s scientists have spoken on this. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences — founded in the 1800s by Republican president Abraham Lincoln — and every scientific society in the U.S. and around the world has weighed in on this. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that the globe is warming, our climate is changing, and it’s due to human activity, fossil-fuel burning and other activities, that are increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere; and that the impacts are already threatening us and our environment and that the threat will be far greater if we don’t do something about it. That is literally the consensus of the world scientists. That isn’t being debated.

There is still a worthy debate to be had about what we do about that, how we meet that challenge. That’s the debate we ought to be having — what sort of policies can we put in place both to increase our resilience with respect to the changes that are already going to take place, that we’re already committed to and can’t stop, and to make sure we can prevent those additional changes that we still can. That is worthy of debate, and there’s room at the table for people of all political persuasions. I think some of the more positive developments recently are conservative Republicans who have come to the table and said “Look, the science is clear, climate change is a problem, let’s make sure our principles, our free market principles, are part of this discussion.”

That’s the debate we’ve needed to have.

Some people in this state still say there isn’t a problem or that we can’t do anything about it. Are we in a situation where doing nothing — riding it out — is even a choice?

Mann: No, it’s not. First of all, we’re going to have to adapt. There’s a certain amount of sea-level rise that’s baked in. It’s going to happen. We’re going to have to adapt to that. We’re going to need to take all sorts of measures, such as living coastlines and other things, to increase our resiliency to those changes.

But more than that, if we continue with business as usual with burning fossil fuels through the decades ahead and through the next century we will create a fundamentally different planet, a degraded planet. We’ll see that in our lifetime. But more than that, we’ll be leaving behind a fundamentally degraded planet for our children and grandchildren, and that’s just wrong.

Reprinted from the Tideland News

SWANSBORO — Despite what you might hear, there’s strong evidence that climate change is having an impact on North Carolina: Look carefully at the fish.

That was one of the messages from Pete Peterson, a researcher and professor at the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City. He was among the scientists, TV weathermen and journalists on the boat Friday touring the marshes of the White Oak River. The boat trip was part of a workshop on climate change’s effects on coastal habitats organized by the N.C. Coastal Federation.

Greg “Rudi” Rudolph, the Carteret County Shore Protection Office manager, and Todd Miller, the federation’s executive director, also spoke on the tour, which included stops at Bear and Jones islands in Hammocks Beach State Park.

Others on the trip – and who spoke and participated Friday evening and Saturday morning during sessions at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort – included Susan Hassol, director of Climate Communication; Michael Mann, who as director of the Earth Systems Science Center in the Department of Meteorology at Penn State University is a heavyweight in the study of climate change; Tom Peterson, president of the World Meteorological Organization’s Commission for Climatology and former principal scientist for NOAA’s  National Climatic Data Center in Asheville; Ryan Broyles, North Carolina’s state meteorologist; and Greg Fishel, chief meteorologist at WRAL-TV in Raleigh. Participating media came from all around North Carolina.

The focus of the trip on the Lady Swan, a Swansboro-based ferry, was to see some of the more effective means being used to combat the effects of rising sea level and other impacts of climate change.

Peterson, whose work involves research and teaching grad students in paleoecology, invertebrate fisheries management, estuarine habitat evaluation and barrier island ecology, said that it’s fairly easy to see the effects on local waters and fish.

For example, he said, a thermometer hung for decades in the water off the bridge to Pivers Island – home of NOAA’s Beaufort Lab and the Duke Lab – clearly shows a 1.8-degree Fahrenheit rise in water temperatures in the past two decades.

At the same time, Peterson said, there’s been an equally clear shift in the composition of fish stocks in some locations. The NOAA lab, he said, has for decades sampled reef fish, and has found that over the past four decades, there’s been a marked decrease in the number of northern, temperate species, and a corresponding dramatic increase in the number of tropical species.

Peterson, Miller and Lexia Weaver, a federation scientist, also led extensive discussions of the use of natural, or “living,” shorelines as an alternative to combat erosion that has always occurred and is almost sure to accelerate as sea level rises in response to warming water temperatures.

They pointed out the success of some of those projects at Hammocks Beach State Park, both on the mainland, at the ferry dock, and at Jones Island. In both cases, the projects, which use oyster shells and marsh grass, have stabilized shorelines.

A major benefit in a time of rising sea levels, Miller said, is that the living shorelines allow the marsh to migrate inland as the sea level rises. Bulkheads, the more common method of erosion control, don’t. As the sea rises, the marsh in front of the wall is overcome along with everything else. The wall itself will eventually need major repairs or complete replacement.

Peterson said one of his former graduate students, Rachel Gittman, did an extensive study of living shorelines and bulkheads after Hurricane Irene, a large and destructive Category One storm that severely affected Carteret and other coastal counties in 2011. While seawalls and bulkheads might look “massive and permanent,” Peterson said, the study showed that they fared far worse – with some over-wash, some breaches and some complete failures – than the living shorelines, which generally were unscathed.

And that doesn’t even take into consideration the significant “ecosystem services” provided by living shorelines, Peterson added. The oyster shells attract baby oysters, or spat, and eventually become living reefs that filter water and attract a variety of marine life.

As climate change helps to produce stronger storms and more wave energy, along with sea-level rise, it will be increasingly important to use erosion control methods that not only are effective, but also preserve as much of the natural habitat as possible, Peterson and the others said, because that habitat is the engine for reproduction of fish and shellfish that are so valuable to the state’s coastal economy and way of life.

Living shorelines, Miller said, are gaining in acceptance, because of their effectiveness and low long-term cost, but “a lot of education is still necessary” in order for them to gain more widespread use and provide the “resiliency” needed as climate change impacts increase in severity.

He also said he believes that beach re-nourishment – if done properly, using the proper materials, with those who benefit bearing most of the cost – helps buy time and provides good short-term protection of the ocean beaches that are so crucial to the coastal tourism economy.

Miller, however, cautioned that as the effects of climate change become more pronounced, even living shorelines probably won’t be enough.

“My opinion is that for now, we need to do the things that do the least harm,” he said. “Sooner or later, living shorelines are not going to be able to stop (erosion and habitat loss), but probably nothing else will, either.”

The goal, Miller said, should be to try to ensure that as much of the crucial habitat as possible survives.

Rudolph spent much of his time talking about the practicality of making policy decisions for dealing with climate change. Market incentives – providing cost breaks for insurance for property owners who elevate structures above expected flood levels, for example – are probably doing more than anything else to help address current and future impacts of climate change, he said.

Last of a two-part series

More than half of North American bird species are threatened by climate change according to a recent study by the National Audubon Society. The report, Audubon Birds and Climate, predicts that a warming climate is likely to have many species leaving home in search of cooler, more hospitable climes, including those familiar to North Carolina.

Here are some of our state’s birds that the report considers at risk of losing more than half of their current range by 2080:

Audubon North Carolina is campaigning to put up 10,000 bird houses for the brown-headed nuthatch by 2015. Photo: David Hill/Flickr Creative Commons

Brown-headed Nuthatch

The Southeastern pine-forest habitat of this squeaky-voiced bird that weighs less than one ounce is vulnerable not only to development but to the more frequent and severe storms associated with global warming, says Audubon North Carolina President Heather Hahn. There are currently only about 160,000 to 175,000 birds left in North Carolina. The birds seem content to live in manmade nest boxes if there are a few pines nearby to supply their pine-seed and insect diet. Aubudon N.C. has embarked on a massive campaign to get North Carolinians to put up nest boxes with one to 1 1/8-inch holes. Larger holes invite competing bluebirds. The goal is 10,000 boxes by the end of the year; 8,000 are already up. Find details here.

Scarlet Tanager

This flashy resident of the piedmont and mountains could find 93 percent of its winter range unsuitable by 2080. Climate-change projections show the species moving gradually north. By 2080, the only places suitable for it may be Canada and the farthest northeast points of the U.S.

Wild Turkey

North Carolina’s fields and forests echo with the “gobble, gobble” of this striking bird, brown with an iridescent sheen. Climate-change projections show wild turkey populations gradually concentrating in the mountains and further north. By 2080, their range could be greatly expanded during breeding season but not in the Carolinas, where the bird could become practically nonexistent.

Herring Gull

Talk about a survivor. Audubon’s map page calls it “the quintessential gull: big and adaptable, lively and successful.” It’s currently snatching up fast-food leftovers in parking lots all over the East, the Midwest and the Pacific Coast; and that will continue, the report expects. There may be a thinning of its population in the Carolinas, but “with the right combination of garbage dumps, shopping malls and coastlines, herring gulls may have a better chance of weathering climate change than other species,” the report says.

Golden-winged Warbler

More likely to be seen in Wisconsin and Minnesota than in North Carolina, this colorful warbler nevertheless has a presence in the N.C. mountains with some 1,000 spread across a 3,000 to 6,000-foot elevation range. You can see them – if you’re persistent and lucky – on Roan Mountain, in Haywood County, and near Boone, West Jefferson, Fontana Lake and Robbinsville. They like the shrubs around the edges of mountain balds. Audubon N.C. is trying to make sure they stay in the state by advising public and private landowners on protecting their habitat. The broad range of elevation available gives them “room to move around” during climate change, says Curtis Smalling, Audubon N.C.’s director of land bird conservation.

The brown pelican is one of 314 U.S. birds threatened by climate change. Photo: Linda Tanner/Flickr Creative Commons

Brown Pelicans

Surfing the waves in line formation, brown pelicans are an iconic coastal bird in North Carolina. They’re found here primarily during summer breeding months and also in smaller numbers during the winter. By 2080, brown pelicans are projected to lose just over half of their current winter range. And, while the area of their suitable climatic range will expand, much of it is away from the coast. According to Audubon, one uncertainty facing the bird in coming decades is how climate change will affect its prey — fish.

American Oystercatcher

Building its nest right on the beach on the East and Gulf coasts, the comical-looking bird with the orange-ringed eyes is vulnerable to the effects that sea-level rise may have on its oyster diet but also to human efforts to hold back that rise, like dredging for beach restoration. Once a parent bird is flushed from the nest, it may abandon it. Last spring, a temporary dredging project at the south end of Wrightsville Beach — not related to climate change — took place during nesting season. Not only oystercatchers but other beach-nesting birds like least and common terns and black skimmers were “cheek by jowl with this construction project,” says Audubon biologist Lindsay Addison. “We had fewer nesting birds and less success at producing fledglings.”

Black Skimmer

The black skimmer flies so close to the surface of North Carolina’s estuaries and inlets that it appears to be skimming with the surface, its beak open, ready to scoop up dinner. Like the American Oystercatcher, the black skimmer lays its nest directly on the beach, too. Audubon dubbed this bird the “risk-takers” for putting up with coastal storms and human activities like dredging and beach re-nourishment. Soon they will risk living with sea-level rise and less coastal area suitable for survival. Audubon’s report predicts that their climatic range will decline by nearly two-thirds in the winter and by more than five-sixths in summer.

Climate-change models predict piping plovers, a yearlong resident, will expand further north to winter. Photo courtesy: National Audubon Society

Piping Plover

This small shorebird makes a home year-round in North Carolina. Piping Plovers are already listed on the federal Endangered Species List as threatened, in this state, and endangered, further north in their range. Audubon’s report forecasts that along the Atlantic shoreline, piping plovers will expand further north during winter. Sea-level rise will also become a critical threat to the species in both summer and winter seasons.

Dunlin

This species of sandpiper likes to visit North Carolina during the winter. Climate model predict that dunlins may have to winter further north of North Carolina as temperatures continue to warm. Unlike most of its relatives, though, dunlins aren’t accustomed to migrating great distances. Their greatest threat, however, is their disappearing summer range near the Arctic where they breed, which may simply be squeezed out by climate change, says Audubon.

This story first appeared in the Charlotte Observer and News & Observer of Raleigh.

The American oystercatcher is among the 314 birds that National Audubon Society’s recent report considers at risk of losing more than half of its range across the country by 2080. Photo: Meryl Lorenzo/Audubon Photography Awards

First of a two-part series

North Carolina’s bright summertime landscape of songbirds, seabirds and even game birds like wild turkeys may be in for some drastic changes as the 21^st century wears on.

The climate change predicted by many scientists to accelerate rapidly is likely to have many species leaving home in search of cooler, more hospitable climes.

“For the majority of the birds, especially in the East, it’s going to be a northward shift,” says Tom Auer, Important Bird Area biologist for the National Audubon Society and one of the authors of the society’s recent study on the effects of climate change on North American birds.

In the case of North Carolina’s birds, the move could be westward. The Appalachians beckon with their nearly 6,700-feet elevation, and that, Auer says, “is going to allow species at lower elevations to move uphill as climate change progresses.”

The N.C. mountains already make up the southernmost range for a number of birds, says Curtis Smalling, land bird conservation director for Audubon North Carolina. They include several species of warbler, least and alder flycatchers, and the ruffed grouse.

Some of North Carolina’s most familiar birds are among the 314 that the report considers at risk of losing more than half of their current range across the country by 2080. They include mallards, house finches, ospreys, wild turkeys and, on the coast, black skimmers and American oystercatchers.

Others – including northern cardinals, eastern bluebirds, mockingbirds, Carolina wrens, goldfinches, and downy woodpeckers – are not considered at risk to such a degree.

Home Sweet Home

“Birds are very similar to us. They can live only within a certain range of temperature, precipitation and seasonal change,” says Heather Hahn, president of Audubon North Carolina.

“If it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, birds cannot survive.”

The report, which studied 588 species in all, admits that it can’t predict what individual species among the 314 considered at risk will choose to go, but most are likely to move, says Auer.

“They’re migratory species, and that indicates they have the capacity to relocate.”

It’s already happening in some areas, he says.

“The hooded oriole is making a lot of moves farther up into California,” Auer says; and the Acadian flycatcher, which counts N.C. forests among its homes, “has recently really been pushing into New England.”

Those birds caught in changing circumstances are already beginning to suffer, National Audubon President David Yarnold indicated recently as he introduced the report in an NPR interview:

“This year, in southern California, 90 to 95 percent of raptor nests failed,” he said. “There were no baby raptors because of drought.”

The scientists used 40 years of climate information and several decades of Christmas Bird Counts and North American Breeding Bird Surveys to determine the current comfort zones of the 588 species.

What Do Birds Need?

These comfort zones, called “climate envelopes,” consist of the amounts of rainfall, the range in temperatures and the seasonal changes that each species has come to depend upon.

Then they compared these requirements with climate changes predicted by the 2007 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Assuming that the majority of threatened birds will strike out to new territories rather than sit still and perhaps perish, the six scientists conducting the study created animated maps showing places where various species might find compatible climates.

This little bird is the brown-headed nuthatch, a non-migratory bird that may lose 95 percent of its summer breeding range by 2080. Photo: David Hill/Flickr Creative Commons

The maps also illustrate likely population shifts in what Auer says is “kind of a best-case scenario for a lot of birds.”

Fans of particular birds can seek them out by name or state on the maps.

But the study, meant to guide future bird conservation efforts, doesn’t tell the whole story, Auer says.

“While the climate may be suitable, the habitat may not be there,” he says. What looks like open space on the map might turn out to be a parking lot or a high-rise.

Work to Do

That’s where bird-lovers come in.

North Carolina has 13,000 Audubon members and 1.5 million North Carolinians who identified themselves as bird watchers in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife survey, according to Hahn.

Besides galvanizing them to work for a reduction in greenhouse gases, she hopes the report will inspire them to create and preserve habitats for both existing birds and those that are to come.

“We need to know that, as they move, they have the habitat they need,” she says.

For her, the report is “a story of hope. We know what they need, and I think we can help them survive.”

Michael Burchell, in red, smells a plug of soil from North River Farms and passes it around to people attending the Blue Carbon Workshop. The roots in the soil are an important location for carbon dioxide or, in the case of a salt marsh, “blue carbon.” Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

SMYRNA — Out in the middle of a salt marsh in rural, coastal North Carolina a small group of scientists, land managers, engineers and conservationists gather around, passing a plug of wet, black soil. They rub it between their fingertips then bring it up to their faces for a closer look and a long whiff — that rotten-egg smell of sulfur, rich with hope and opportunity.

The mats of roots in the soil are a clue to something invisible, something driving global research and discussion. They call it “blue carbon,” after the carbon dioxide that’s taken up and stored by ecosystems near the ocean — salt marshes, tidal wetlands, mangroves and sea grasses. However, it means much more than that for us all.

Aside from improving water quality, providing habitat to fish and wildlife and protecting us from floods and storm surges, the salt marshes and tidal wetlands of eastern North Carolina provide a newly recognized and highly valuable “service” — they help fight climate change, big time. And that’s marketable.

What is actually being measured when anyone speaks of blue carbon is the net amount of greenhouse gasses being released and absorbed by a coastal marine ecosystem, such as a salt marsh. Greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are the ones warming the planet. If a salt marsh acts as a sink, draining the heat-trapping gases out of the atmosphere, then it could be sold on the global carbon market in the form of a carbon offset credit.

“It’s an additional ecosystem service, and we’re becoming increasingly attuned to the need to mitigate climate change. So by recognizing this, it adds a little bit more of the imperative to restore (coastal) landscapes. Hopefully it will bring more funding to agencies who do ecosystem restoration,” said Steve Crooks, a global expert and consultant on blue carbon.

Crooks was one of the people examining the marsh soil. He came to Beaufort two weeks ago for the two-day workshop on blue carbon put on by Restore America’s Estuaries, a national nonprofit, and one of its regional partners, the N.C. Coastal Federation. Joining him was Restore America’s Estuaries’ senior director of strategic planning and programs, Steve Emmett-Mattox.

This graph shows the amount of carbon dioxide in tons per hectare sequestered and stored by different ecosystems; the brown represents the carbon in soil and the green, in plants. The order of ecosystems are as follows: sea grass, salt marsh, estuarine mangroves, oceanic mangroves and tropical forests. The top four coastal marine ecosystems are, in most cases, more effective carbon sinks than tropical forests. Source: Murray, Brian, Linwood Pendleton, W. Aaron Jenkins, and Samantha Sifleet. 2011. Green Payments for Blue Carbon: Economic Incentives for Protecting Threatened Coastal Habitats. Nicholas Institute Report.

“If you work in the restoration sector, you know that there’s a lot of unmet need to restore these habitats and we need more resources,” Emmett-Mattox said.

He came to the workshop to help land managers in the Southeast begin to understand this emerging topic and its potential for bringing financial resources to their conservation work. After all, the term blue carbon has only been around about five years and its science is still rapidly evolving.

For a plant, carbon dioxide is like pie. They “sequester” the pie – take it in – and store it throughout their bodies, the “biomass,” and into the soil via their roots. What makes these “blue” ecosystems near the ocean the pie-eating-contest champions of the planet is their wet, salty environment that keeps methane emissions extremely low and slows the breakdown of carbon. Also, they have a deep layer of organic-rich soil that stores hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide, much deeper than what is below a terrestrial forest.

By comparison, coastal marine ecosystems store more greenhouse gasses per acre than a tropical rainforest. And though they only make up six percent of land area covered by tropical forests, when they’re destroyed they contribute one-fifth of all emissions attributed to deforestation worldwide. It may take hundreds of years for carbon to build up in the soil, but it only takes a matter of days to be released back into the atmosphere when tidal wetlands are ditched and drained.

On the second day of the workshop, the group traveled to one of the federation’s wetland restoration projects called North River Farms. Looking around, it was hard to believe that the marsh everyone was standing in had been a farm for 30 years. It’s taken roughly seven years to restore the farmland into tidal wetlands, and now the federation wants to know whether it’s storing more greenhouse gasses than it’s emitting. Over the last three years, N.C. State University has been doing that groundbreaking research with funding from the U.S. Geological Survey.

“There hadn’t been a lot of studies in wetlands that are as salty as this brackish marsh, so there was kind of a hole left in the science on this,” said Michael Burchell, the lead project researcher and an associate professor at N.C. State who has been monitoring, designing and restoring the farm since 2003.

Freshwater wetlands naturally generate a significant amount of methane, which is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Would a brackish tidal marsh with saltier conditions also generate so much methane that it offsets the carbon being taken in through the plants?

This restored marsh was once a farm growing corn and soy. Now it is a carbon sink. North River Farms is one of the N.C. Coastal Federation’s wetland restoration projects. Photo: Tess Malijenovsky

The short answer is no.

“What we learned was that there is very little methane that is being produced in these brackish marsh systems,” said Burchell, a result of the microorganisms in the soil using sulfur instead of methane, which gives off that rotten-egg smell. He and his doctorate student, Yo-Jin Shiau, also found that while the marsh is giving off some carbon dioxide, “[it] is acting as a true sink for carbon meaning there’s more carbon coming into the system and being trapped than leaving.”

Therefore, restored coastal marshes have a role to play in the global effort to address climate change.

“Why I’m excited about the North River Farms work,” Emmett-Mattox said, “is I think all of that really adds important knowledge that coastal managers can use.

“I think where we are is that we need a better understanding in specific places and specific estuaries as to what the carbon benefits of conserving and restoring those habitats really are because there’s still relatively few places where this is being measured and considered,” he said.

Over 40 people showed up for the workshop from across the Southeast, which was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At the workshop, attendees learned about the tools and standards that exist to verify credits and how to assess the blue carbon potential of a project. The lesson chief among them though was that blue carbon creates an economic incentive to conserve and restore our coastal ecosystems, or as some workshop attendees said “to do the right thing.”

So, go on, next time you look out over the salt marsh, see if it doesn’t smell a little sweeter.

BEAUFORT – Sheldon Whitehouse came to North Carolina this week gathering more facts for his one-man crusade to persuade his colleagues in the U.S. Senate to finally awaken to the dangers of climate change.

He stood on the stern of the Susan Hudson, the Duke Marine Lab’s research ship, as it slowly steamed past the Beaufort waterfront on Taylor Creek. Surrounding him was a gaggle of local scientists, who took turns telling Whitehouse about their work on climate change and the coastal environment.  Wetlands and oyster reefs could disappear, he was told. Groundwater could be contaminated, and the population of krill in the Artic could be so reduced that humpback whales will be in more trouble than they are now.

Whitehouse listened earnestly, nodded at appropriate times and asked a few probing questions. His staff took copious notes. One suspects that much of what he heard Monday will end up in a few of his weekly Senate lectures.

For this Rhode Island Democrat is something of an oddity in America today – the rare politician who cares about climate change, understands the dangers it poses and isn’t afraid to publicly say so. Every week that the 113th Congress has been session – that’s 63 stretched over two years — Whitehouse has taken to the Senate floor for another installment of his “Time to Wake Up” speeches on climate change.

Scientists crowd the stern of the Susan Hudson for a chance to talk with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, right center in red jacket. Photo: Sam Bland

Armed with graphs, charts and photos, he has talked about rising temperatures, about inundation and droughts, about wildfires, about disruptions to the farming and fishing industries, about threats to national security, about acidic oceans, about displaced coastal communities, about the moral imperative of preserving God’s creation.

Whitehouse does it, he says, “hoping that someday spark will hit tinder. “

In every speech, Whitehouse acknowledges the manufactured propaganda churned out by, what he calls, the “climate denial network” that has stymied any real political action. “But the facts speak for themselves,” he told his colleagues on Feb. 12. “The denial position has shown itself to be nonsense; a sham.  Yet, in Congress, we sleepwalk on.  Every day, more and more Americans realize the truth, and they increasingly want this Congress to wake up.  They know that climate change is real.”

Don’t count the N.C. Republicans vying for a seat in that Congress as being among the group of newly aware Americans. In televised debates this week, the four leading GOP contenders for Democrat Kay Hagan’s Senate seat laughed derisively when asked by moderators if climate change was real. They all, of course, responded with emphatic “Nos.” But, then, one of the candidates also said that evolution was a fantasy.

If elected in November, the new Republican senator from North Carolina would be in good company. Sixty-five percent of current Senate Republicans also deny climate change. Over 56 percent of Republicans in the House deny the basic tenets of climate science. What this means is that they have made public statements indicating that they question or reject that climate change is real, is happening now and is caused by human consumption of fossil fuels.

The numbers on the other side of the aisle are a little better. In fairness, though, it should be pointed out that Hagan hasn’t exactly been a proponent for action. She has been criticized for her support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which figures prominently in the climate-change political debate. Though not a denier, Hagan is more of an Obama-style centrist, opting for the President’s “all-of-the-above” approach to energy issues.

Alex Mandela, top, talks to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse about climate change’s potential effects on groundwater. Patrick Kenney, the superintendent of Cape Lookout National Seashore, tells him what might happen at the park. Photos: Sam Bland

So that leaves a few lone wolves, like Sheldon Whitehouse in the Senate and Harry Waxman in the House, barking their warnings.

To collect more ammunition, Whitehouse decided to hit the road during Congress’ Easter recess to learn about the research being done on climate change’s effects and to see what communities are doing to adapt, explained Seth Larson, the senator’s communication’s director. After a day in North Carolina, Whitehouse planned to make stops in South Carolina and Georgia before ending in Miami, Florida.

“His big hope is to get legislation to limit carbon pollution,” Larson said. “He’s hopeful that with the right pressure there will be a window to make that happen.”

Maybe in 2015, Larson said.

Until then, Whitehouse listens to people like Alex Mandela, a hydrologist at East Carolina University. Mandela used his few minutes on the back of the boat to tell the senator what would happen if the sea behaved as many climate scientist expect and rises three feet by the end of the century.  Low-lying land will be flooded, yes, but even those on high ground will have a tough time of it, Mandela said.  Most people along the N.C. coast get their water from wells, but a rising ocean will contaminate those wells with salt water, Mandela said.

Flushing the toilet may also be a problem for those on septic tanks, he said, because a rising water table will flood drain fields.

“If the water table rises and compromises septic system, then water quality will be threatened,” Mandela noted.

Chris Taylor, a fisheries biologist at the NOAA lab on Pivers Island near Beaufort, told Whitehouse about the fish sampling that lab scientists have done at nearby Beaufort Inlet for decades. “We’re seeing a lot more tropical fish coming in, like lionfish and species you see in Florida,” he said. “We know these populations will shift, but it’s these long-term data sets that are telling us that.”

Antonio Rodriguez of UNC’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City described his work of monitoring oyster reefs to see if they will grow fast enough to keep up with a three-foot rise in sea level in 100 years, while Mike Burchell of N.C. State University told of his research on whether wetlands will do the same. Answer to both: Yes, depending on the location and circumstances.

But it was Mike Orbach, the former director of the Duke Marine Lab, who offered the sobering message. “We can’t mitigate a way out of this,” he told Whitehouse as the Susan Hudson made the turn in the creek and headed back to the lab. “The time frames are too long and the scales too great. Even if we all started driving Priuses tomorrow, the sea will rise a meter. We will have to adapt to it.”

Back at the dock, Whitehouse thanked the scientists for joining him on the boat ride. He promised that he will continue pushing for action. “It’s the least I can do,” he said.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

MANTEO — The N.C. Department of Transportation road show made its third and final stop here last week to explain what it intends to do about the battered section of N.C. 12 near Rodanthe on Hatteras Island.

The plan contemplates one of two bridge alternatives to elevate the road above a “hot spot” just north of Mirlo Beach that has been subject to severe erosion and ocean overwash, even in relatively mild storms.

DOT’s preferred method of fixing the breach at Rodanthe is a 2.3-mile-long bridge and about a quarter-mile of land-based improvements that would follow the current path of N.C. 12 from just south of the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge southern boundary to a point where the Liberty Service Station in Rodanthe is located. Dot estimates the cost at $187.5 million and $215.5 million.

The second option includes a 2.6-mile-long bridge and three miles of improvements that would be built in the Pamlico Sound, west of the current road. Cost: $203.3 to $215.5 million.

Both would involve the relocation of a few houses and businesses, including the Liberty Service Station, an important year-round business for residents of the Rodanthe-Salvo-Waves communities.

The photo shows the two options DOT is considering to fix the breach at Rodanthe. Photo: NCDOT

In addition, both options would obstruct views, either to the ocean or the sound near the terminal point in Rodanthe.  The road in Pamlico Sound might also affect recreation, fisheries and vegetation in the sound.

Some property owners in Mirlo Beach have recently expressed opposition to both options and have endorsed retaining the current route of N.C. 12 and using beach re-nourishment to protect the troubled road.

Brad Payne, a Rodanthe property owner, said both bridge options “are going to be absolutely detrimental to our community, to a portion of our livelihoods, rental homes and I think it will have a tremendous impact on tourism.”

In addition forcing the relocation of several businesses, the preferred option uses one-way service roads and turning areas running north and south, parallel to the bridge for properties to be accessed, some residents said.

Warren Judge, chairman of the Dare County Board of Commissioners, asked the DOT representatives to take into consideration the concerns of Rodanthe residents and suggested that the agency partner with the county to nourish some of the beach and perhaps shorten the improvements to save the Liberty Service Station and avoid view issues.

The Rodanthe projects are part of the larger plans to replace the Herbert C. Bonner Bride over Oregon Inlet and a temporary bridge in the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge that spans an inlet opened by Hurricane Irene in 2011.

A contract to build the Bonner Bridge replacement was awarded in July 2011. The contract for the Pea Island bridge was awarded in November 2013.

Earlier in January, DOT held other public hearings on the Rodanthe projects in Ocracoke Island and on Hatteras Island.

DOT will accept public comments until Jan. 24. Comments can be mailed, faxed or emailed to: Drew Joyner, NCDOT-Human Environment Section, 1598 Mail Service Rd., Raleigh 27699-1598. You can also email comments or fax them to 919-212-5785.

Christians, says Penny Hooper, often don’t put their beliefs to work protecting God’s creation.  They just need to know how, she says.

Interfaith Power & Light, Hooper hopes, is one way.

This national coalition that describes itself as “a religious response to global warming” and believes that Christians and environmentalists aren’t necessarily very different and that they can work together to solve the greatest environmental threat.

Interfaith Power & Light believes that the Christian response to global warming is good stewardship – in this case, promoting energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.

“This organization works from our moral commitment to Creation Care and specifically for advocacy and education about climate change within faith-based communities,” said Hooper, Carteret County resident. “Alternative energy gives the churches more money to use in other ways.”

Penny Hooper helps her husband, Mark, in the crab shack of their seafood business in Smyrna in Carteret County. Photo: NOAA

Hooper serves as the secretary of the steering committee of the N.C. chapter of Interfaith and is the sole representative from coastal North Carolina. She organizes events and demonstrations in the coastal region and monitors such issues as offshore wind development and offshore drilling.

“I work on offshore wind as an alternative to offshore drilling. [We are] not in favor of that,” she said.

Hooper taught for 16 years at Carteret Community College, where she chaired the sustainability committee. She also chaired the Green Team at her church. That’s where she first heard of Interfaith Power & Light.

“I decided when I retired, rather than work from the ‘head’ I wanted to work from the ‘heart’. The scientists aren’t getting it done, she said. “One is a moral responsibility and the other is ‘scientifically’.”

Interfaith has its roots in Episcopal Power & Light, which was formed in 1998 by the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of California. The group expanded its reach two years later and brought in partners from other faiths, becoming California Interfaith Power & Light.

That group was instrumental in the passage of many of California’s climate and clean energy laws. Since then, 38 states have followed this model, and IPL is working to bring similar programs to every state.

To become an affiliate groups must be faith-based and include multiple faith traditions; have a steering committee or board of directors that includes ordained religious leaders; advocate for clean energy, conservation and responsible stewardship in response to global warming; and have a written work plan and timeline that provides a description of a strategy for taking action and raising funds.

North Carolina became the 16th state to join Interfaith Power and Light in 2005 as the organization then known as Climate Connection: Eco-Justice Network, which represented Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims. The name was changed to North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light (NCIPL) in January 2007.

The state group accomplishes its educational goals by working through churches and synagogues and by holding educational classes and workshops.

The group’s empowered program offers churches free energy audits, which helps churches identify ways to reduce their carbon footprint and  save energy and money. The program also helps churches discover ways to finance the installation of solar energy and other forms of renewable energy at their buildings.

N.C. Interfaith Power & Light helped stage a protest against a coal-fired power plant in Asheville. Photo: French Broad Riverkeeper

The N.C. group also offers Earth Sabbath Celebrations, interfaith, Earth-based hour-long services in Chapel Hill, Asheville, Durham and Raleigh.

According to Hooper, members of the steering committee are always happy to give presentations to congregations about ways they can support the transition to alternative energy sources.

“It’s never too late,” she adds.

Even if a building is complete there are still ways the congregation can implement green changes. Hooper is willing to meet with building committees, pastors and Bible studies to share her knowledge of ways to better care for the earth that God created for our enjoyment.

In addition to education, policy advocacy is part of the core mission of the state group. It provides information and opportunities for communities and congregations to get involved in policy-making activities related to efficient use of energy. Hydraulic fracking natural gas and proposed electricity rate hikes are just two of the issues it is currently working on.

“The Preach-In is a big event from our religious leaders who want to talk about creation care and climate care. Afterwards everyone sends a Valentine to our representatives and senators telling them to love the earth and treat it like their mothers,” Hooper added.

This year’s Preach-In will take place Feb. 8-10 in various locations across the United States.

Tuckerton, N.J., seems adrift at sea after Sandy passed on Oct. 30. Can residents of the Jersey shore expect more of the same in the future? Photo: Coast Guard.

NEW YORK — In the aftermath of a storm that left more than 100 dead, over 8.5 million without power and caused an estimated $50 billion in damage, scientific experts and coastal residents alike are grappling with the portent of Superstorm Sandy.

Was this an incredibly damaging but incredibly rare strike on New York and New Jersey? Or is Sandy a harbinger of things to come, of a climate system driven to extremes by manmade greenhouse gas emissions?

For scientists convinced that global climate will undergo dramatic changes in the coming decades, extreme events like Sandy serve as something of a flashpoint. On the one hand, there is always a probability, however low, that an extreme event will occur within a given year. On the other, a warming climate fundamentally alters the probability of such extreme events.

Sandy’s Track and Surge

The track of Hurricane Sandy (red line), Hurricane Irene (orange line), and all tropical storms and hurricanes from the NOAA Hurdat2 historical database that crossed within 3° latitude and 5° longitude of Long Island, New York (blue lines).

Conflating the issue is the very unusual track of Sandy. Forming as a depression in the Caribbean Sea on Oct. 22, Sandy strengthened into a late-season hurricane while heading northward through Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas. Off the coast of the Carolinas, Sandy interacted with a low-pressure system over the eastern United States, transitioning into a large and powerful hybrid storm before taking a westward turn into southern New Jersey on Oct. 30. Historically, most storms in this region, including Irene in 2011, have tracked to the northeast.

“There is no storm like it in the historical database,” noted Adam Sobel, professor of applied physics and applied mathematics at Columbia University and an expert on tropical meteorology. “The track was a worst-case scenario for New York City.”

Strikes by tropical systems on New England are, by themselves, not usual: tropical storm or hurricane landfalls along the coast between New Jersey and Massachusetts occur about every six to 10 years, according to a study published in 2007 in the Journal of Climate. But the storm surge from Sandy in New York City was likely larger than any storm in recorded history. A study published this year by Ning Lin, Kerry Emanuel and colleagues in Nature Climate Change suggests that the storm surge from Sandy was a once in 700 years event .

The Attribution Paradox

Adam Sobel

Kerry Emanuel

Joerg Schaefer

Any search for a link between Superstorm Sandy and global climate change is hampered by a fundamental issue: Sandy was just one storm. And in the realm of noisy weather patterns, practically anything is possible given enough time, even without climate change.

“There are two logical possibilities,” said Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “One is that we were extraordinarily unlucky, and Sandy was a very rare event that we just happened to see this year. The other is that some change in the system has made events like this more probable.

“The big problem is that Sandy was a hybrid event (a combination of a hurricane and a nor’easter), and we haven’t done our homework on hybrid events,” Emanuel continued. “It’s impossible to know without more work.”

On the link between Sandy and climate change, Sobel is “skeptical but not dismissive”.

“It’s very hard to connect one event to climate,” he said. “But we’ve had two storms [Irene and Sandy] in two years and this track that’s never happened before in 150 years. We have to have an open mind when trying to determine the links between climate and severe weather events, even if we don’t yet understand all of them.”

For Joerg Schaefer, research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, proving the influence of climate change on Sandy is “putting the burden of proof on the wrong shoulders”.

“Everything behaves as we’d predict in a warmer world,” Schaefer said, citing the record loss of Arctic sea ice this summer as the latest in a litany of global weather extremes over the last decade. “The question needs to be turned around: Can we prove that climate change did not affect Sandy?”

As longtime residents of coastal areas can attest, hurricane-prone regions have witnessed dramatic increases in population, population density and development over the past decades. All have led to an intensification of the damage incurred from storms, even if the storms are not getting stronger. But add stronger storms on top of this, and the losses mount precariously.

“Over the last 100 years, the vast majority of the increase in hurricane damage is from demographics, not climate”, noted Emanuel, who studies hurricane losses and climate change. “But the two are multiplicative, not additive.”

“Even 150 years ago before CO₂ was rising, the Jersey Shore, Battery Park and the Rockaways were risky places to develop,” said Schaefer. “But what climate change does is enhance the risk.”

Future Trajectories

Going forward, Emanuel, Schaefer and Sobel agree that extreme events may become more likely due to anthropogenic climate change. The modeling work by Lin, Emanuel and colleagues suggests that the probability of a Sandy-sized storm surge event, a once-in-700 years event today, could increase to better than a once-in-300 years event by 2100, owing to sea-level rise and an increase in the strength of hurricanes from climate change.

“The right question to ask is, ‘Do we have a good reason to expect that the probability of an event like Sandy will increase in a warmer climate?’ CO₂ is pushing us in one direction, on top of what the variability is, which may make extreme events like this more probable,” said Sobel.

“There should be a presumption of some unknown degree of climate influence on unusual weather by this point,” continued Emanuel. “It’s a question of how we should treat risk.”

If there is risk for more frequent or stronger hurricanes, then there is at least one silver lining in Sandy: The hurricane forecasts are better than they have ever been, thanks in no small part to decades of government funding for basic and applied research. “In Katrina, the forecast was very good and in Sandy, the forecast was uncannily good,” noted Sobel. “These were directly the result of long-term, government-financed improvements in forecasts and models”.

In the meantime, the question on everyone’s mind is obvious: When will the next Sandy strike? “I don’t know whether we have any better ability to predict that now than we did a year ago,” said Sobel.

“I don’t want to make predictions, but we’d be smart to start preparing,” he said.

Part 2 in Climate, Insurance and the Coast

In June, the state legislature passed a bill placing a four-year ban on acknowledging rising sea levels due to climate change. The bill was created after the Science Panel on Coastal Hazards of the state Coastal Resources Commission projected that sea levels could rise 39 inches by 2100.

The projection was based, in part, on a U.S. Geological Survey study that states that since 1980, a 600-mile stretch of the Atlantic coastline between Cape Hatteras and Boston has experienced a rise in sea level that is three to four times the global average.

Avalon during Hurricane Sandy. Photo by Kermit Skinner

Backers of House Bill 819 say projections using historical data from tide gauges and carbon dioxide levels predict a rise of no more than eight inches and argue that sea levels are receding in some coastal areas.

Tom Thompson, chairman of NC-20, a coalition of land development businesses and approximately eleven counties, said there is no solid basis for the 39-inch projection.

This Aug. 2011 photo shows a flooded road on Hatteras Island, N.C., after Hurricane Irene swept through the area. Photo by Jim Bounds, AP

“That’s an enormously rapid increase,” he said. “Part of our problem with that projection is that there is no acceleration of that kind anywhere in the world. What people forget is that these things have been going on for centuries. The hype about the insurance industry’s vulnerability on the coast is just exactly that.”

In any given year the industry could lose money, Thompson said, but spread the risks in terms of time and geography and the losses aren’t as stark as the industry suggests.

Kitty Hawk in Hurricane Sandy. Photo by Kermit Skinner

He points to the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association’s Beach Plan, which in September 2011 had retained earnings of more than $630 million, according to information provided by the NCIUA.

The Beach Plan incurred losses from 1980 to 2011 of more than $781 million and the plan’s net earned premium was more than $1.5 billion. During that same period Beach Plan member companies paid in more than $906 million in contributions and received net distributions of more than $146 million from the plan, paying in more than $760 million than they have received, according to NCIUA.

But one major storm, like Hurricane Sandy, which left in its wake a staggering estimated $30 billion to $50 billion in property and economic losses, has the potential to dry up such reserves.

N.C. 12 overwash during Sandy. Photo by Kermit Skinner

“You have to have many good years in order to accumulate enough funds to pay for the bad years,” Marlett said. “The severity of some of these hurricanes is so large that they can wipe out decades of profits.”

After Hurricane Andrew hit south Florida in 1992, Allstate lost more than the company had ever collected up to that point in that state, he said.

“What we can expect to see is insurance companies providing less coverage along the coast,” Marlett said.

That means, predictably, government agencies will be expected to fill the void. The question is where the money will come from to fund those costs, Marlett said.

According to the Ceres report, “total government exposure to losses in hurricane-exposed states has risen more than 15-fold to $885 billion” since 1990.

Commercial insurance buyers are paying more for certain types of coverage, according to the report. Consumers are paying higher insurance premiums.

Long-term solutions, Marlett said, include mitigation – making buildings stronger, implementing better land use management practices along the coast and enforcing stronger building codes.

Communities on the east and west coasts are already discussing ways to plan for greater resiliency in future storms, McHale said.

New York City leaders have taken “great strides” to understand the implications of rising sea level projections and to look at which investments are cost-effective in building their own resiliency, she said. Boston has been a leader in the greenhouse gas mitigation front, looking at renewable energy alternatives.

On the west coast, San Diego has led a study on how to adapt to sea level rise. The Sea Level Rise Adaptation Strategy for San Diego Bay was released in February. A collaboration of local governments around San Diego Bay, the Port of San Diego, San Diego Airport Authority and others, the report evaluates how community assets could be impacted by sea level rise and recommends building resilience of community assets.

Since insurers are influential in risk-reduction practices, it is critical that insurers are involved these discussions, McHale said.

“I think that being smart and being able to look forward and understanding some of the changes that are facing us is critical for any town or city in terms of planning for its own economic well-being,” McHale said. “Honestly, the hard work is still ahead of us. There’s an awful lot to be done and I don’t pretend to trivialize it. We’re going to pay one way or another.”

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on the insurance industry’s calculations about climate change as it affects the coast.

As the 2012 hurricane season winds down, residents in North Carolina’s coastal communities hope they’ve been spared the worst and brace for the potential of hundreds of dollars in property insurance increases.

The possibility of homeowner’s insurance rate hikes along the coast come as scientific research continues to evidence climate change as the driving force behind increasing numbers of catastrophic weather events over the past three decades.

The debate in America over how insurance companies should assess risks in coastal areas is as emotionally charged and highly politicized as that of global warming.

No matter where you stand on the issue of climate change, experts say one thing is certain – insurance companies and the underwriters that insure them are paying close attention to scientific projections that Atlantic storms will become more frequent and stronger.

“In general, it certainly is an issue in the insurance industry,” said Dr. David Marlett, professor and chair of the Department of Finance, Banking and Insurance at Appalachian State University in Boone. “When insurance companies are not sure, they raise their rates. They’re going to err on the side of caution.”

In its latest study released last month, Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, stated that North America has seen the biggest increase in the world in natural catastrophes in the past 30 years, a direct result of global warming.

A study published in September by Ceres, a nonprofit business sustainability group that works closely with the insurance industry, warns that extreme weather risks, including rising sea levels, are growing for the property and casualty insurance sector.

“The insurance industry really is on the front line here when it comes to changes in the impacts of our weather,” said Cynthia McHale, director of Ceres’ insurance program and co-author of Stormy Future for U.S. Property/Casualty Insurers: The Growing Costs and Risks of Extreme Weather Events.

“That’s something you can’t ignore,” she said. “It’s a very straightforward discussion. When you look at that weather pattern over a 30-year period, you can see a trend. This is what we can reasonably expect to see more of in the future.”

Extreme weather events cost insurers more than $32 billion in losses last year, according to the Ceres report. The industry’s net underwriting loss in 2011 was $34 billion, a result of a record 99 disaster declarations by the federal government.

Average temperatures have risen in the past 50 years. Extremely hot summers are 40 times more frequent, according to the report.

Differences in rates of sea-level rise from tide-gauge records across North America over a 60-year period (1950–2009). Figure by USGS

The last half-century has experienced more frequent and intense heat waves, droughts and floods. The hurricane season has been lengthened. Higher ocean surface temperatures, which are expected to continue at least five years, are fueling stronger storms and rising sea levels will likely create larger storm surges, according to the report.

In May 2011, Risk Management Solutions, Inc., the market leader in catastrophic risk modeling, released a new model for Atlantic tropical storms.

RMS predicts that the likelihood of a Category 3 hurricane making landfall on the U.S. coast will be 20 percent higher than previously modeled. On average, modeled losses will increase by 40 percent on average for the Gulf Coast, Florida and the Southeast, according to the report.

These trends have made insuring coastal properties unattractive in the past decade, Marlett said.

“With the reinsurance companies, they’re particularly concerned about this because they insure catastrophic losses,” he said. “When you throw in climate change where there’s uncertainty with that risk, that makes it even worse. When a reinsurance company is selling their protection to an insurance company, if they raise their rates that means that the insurance company will have to pay more and they will increase their rates.”

The state Department of Insurance is considering a request by the North Carolina Rate Bureau to raise rates in coastal counties by 30 percent and statewide by an average 17.7 percent.

Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin has said no decision will be made until after a public hearing set for June 3, 2013.

Coastal residents, business owners and the towns and counties in which they live argue the proposed increase places an excessive burden on homeowners and would stifle economic development along the coast. Opponents agree that insurance rates should be based on actuarial data rather than modeled projected losses.

This fight comes on the heels of another heavily contested dispute about the rate at which the Atlantic Ocean is rising.

To be continued tomorrow…

*Editor’s note: this story was completed prior to Hurricane Sandy’s arrival on the East Coast. Once again the Outer Banks experienced transport disruption and flooding. Our thoughts are with everyone in North Carolina and up the coast affected by the storm.

North Carolina’s Outer Banks – that string of narrow islands that wrap a protective barrier between the Atlantic Ocean and the mainland’s inner coast – is the first line of defense against devastating effects of winds and surging flood waters from hurricanes, nor’easters, and other coastal storms.

By default, those barrier islands also are on the front line of the effects of climate change and sea level rise.

A recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) looks specifically at the threats of climate change to seven national seashores along the Atlantic coast from Cape Cod to Cape Canaveral.

North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Cape Lookout National Seashore – which together comprise nearly 200 of the state’s 325-mile ocean shoreline – are among the most vulnerable,  according to the study titled “Atlantic National Seashores in Peril: The Threats of Climate Disruption.”

Human-caused climate change is the greatest ever threat to Cape Cod (Mass.), Fire Island (N.Y.), Assateague Island (Md.), Cape Hatteras, Cape Lookout, Cumberland Island (Ga.), and Canaveral (Fla.) national seashores, according to the 2012 report.

“Protecting the resources and values of these special places is among the many reasons for acting now to protect our climate,” the report states.

For the study, the researchers considered seashore temperature records and long-range projections, historical weather patterns, sea-level rise vulnerability, visitor access and economic impacts.

USGS images of Pea Island over time 2008-2011.

The seashores are year-round destinations for tourists who enjoy access to miles of undisturbed beaches, history, culture, nature and wildlife.  Bird watchers, in particular, are drawn to unique spectacles of colonial and migrating shore birds.

National Park System records for 2010 show that more than 11 million visitors spent more than $5.6 million at all Atlantic Coast national seashores. That includes close to 2.2 million visitors to Cape Hatteras National Seashore and more than a half-million visitors to Cape Lookout National Seashore spending about $150,000 in combined local economies.

Rising temperatures and seas

For the report, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization researchers compared seashore temperatures from the single decade – 2000-2011– with temperature trends from 1961-1990.  They found temperatures rose 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit at Cape Hatteras and 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit at Cape Lookout.

Alarmingly, the heat-up will continue – unless future emissions of heat trapping pollutants can be held to lower levels.

For example, with medium-high future emissions, average temperatures by 2051-2060 could increase by 3 degrees Fahrenheit at Cape Hatteras National Sea Shore; and, by 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit at Cape Lookout National Seashore.

And, by 2081-2090, temperatures could increase as much as 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit at Cape Hatteras, making it “as hot as recent summers in Galveston, Texas”; and by 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit at Cape Lookout, making it “as hot as Fort Meyers, Florida.”

The RMCO study indicates that some computer models project even higher averages for those same decades.

The researchers assert that the future heat-up would negatively impact seashore visitation: When temperatures are in the 100s, the outdoor experience could be a lot less enjoyable.

The study also underscores the vulnerability of these low-lying seashores in the face of rising sea levels.

Rising sea levels are attributed, in part, to the melting of land-based ice, including mountain glaciers and Arctic ice caps. Also, warming sea-surface temperatures make the waters expand and rise.

The researchers looked at a recent U.S. Geological Survey assessment that ranked the relative vulnerability of different portions of the Atlantic coastline based on tidal range, wave height, coastal slope, shoreline change, geomorphology, and historical rate of relative sea-level rise.

As a result, RMCO researchers suggest that Cape Hatteras, Cape Lookout and Assateague Island – with lands that are less than a meter (39.4 inches) above current sea level – are “in a top tier of vulnerability.”

The National Academy of Sciences project that even with lower future emissions, the global average sea-level rise could be about 20 inches by 2100; with higher emissions, 55 inches.  (Many coastal scientists say the most likely scenario for North Carolina is at least 29 inches by 2100.)<

“Higher seas especially make a difference in magnifying the effects of coastal storms.  With a higher initial sea level, storm surges push farther inland than they did when beginning atop earlier, lower seas,” RMCO researchers say.

Increased risks

The study suggests that human-caused climate change is delivering a one-two punch to the national seashores: rising seas and more frequent and severe coastal storms.

Hurricane Sandy does damage to Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Photo by Kermit Skinner

“As a result, the seashores now are being shaped not just by natural forces, but by a new mixture of natural and unnatural forces, which yield different consequences,” the study states.

Visitor access to the national seashores may be at risk in the face of potential loss of roads and bridges.

“In the long term, the current transportation infrastructure may not be adequate, forcing permanent closures of the current roads and their replacement with alternative methods of access,” the study states in general.

The authors single out the repeated and costly efforts to rebuild washed out sections of roads leading to and through Cape Hatteras National Seashore.  And, they cite boat and ferry service to Cape Lookout National Seashore as alternative access methods.

An altered climate affects historic and cultural resources, including lighthouses and other physical assets.  Already, the National Park Service relocated Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 1999 at a cost of more than $11 million.  Additionally, the historic lightkeeper’s station and Coast Guard Station at Bodie Island Lighthouse, also on Cape Hatteras National Seashore, have been moved out of harm’s way in recent years.

Hotter temperatures, stronger storms and rising seas also pose threats to ecosystems and wildlife, including nesting endangered sea turtles and birds, and the myriad wildlife dependent upon each unique coastal habitat.

Additionally, marine life will most certainly feel the effects of climate change as ocean waters become warmer and more acidic.

Stemming the tide

To stem the tide of threats to national seashores, RMCO researchers and the Natural Resources Defense Council officials say new actions are needed on “an unprecedented scale.”

They call for reducing emissions of climate-changing pollutants, which come mostly from burning fossil fuels. Key steps include:

• Establishing mandatory limits on carbon pollution by at least 20% current levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050;
• Protecting the current Clean Air Act authority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency;
• Overcoming barriers to investment in energy efficiency to lower emission-reduction costs; and
• Accelerating development and deployment of emerging technologies to lower long-term emission reduction costs.

Responding to challenges

Change is a constant at national seashores. And planning for change is constant, say Cape Hatteras Acting Superintendent Darrell Echols and Cape Lookout Superintendent Patrick Kenney.

“Climate change is indeed part of the National Park Service long-range planning strategies. That includes concerns with sea level rise,” Kenney says. “The rate of acceleration may be uncertain, but what is certain is that we are at the leading edge of the sea and it’s an obvious concern.”

Both men have been involved in developing adaptive management strategies to apply the best science available to address climate change and sea level rise.  For starters, each site is going through a self-examination process to identify ways to reduce its “carbon footprint.”

“There are many areas of concern for national seashores, including storm frequency and intensity.  Beaches are eroding, structures behind the dunes are threatened,” Echols points out.

Those structures behind the dunes include lighthouses and other historic buildings.

As the RMCO report points out, Hatteras Lighthouse and the Bodie lightkeeper station already have been moved at considerable expense.

“There is no guarantee that there will be enough money to move all structures in the future. It may come to making priorities based on historical and cultural significance.  Perhaps beach nourishment will be part of a long-term remedy in some situations where retreat is not an option.  The point is, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to managing these dynamic environments,” Echols says.

For example, the responses to climate change, sea level rise and extreme coastal storms is quite different at Cape Hatteras versus Cape Lookout.

“It’s quite complicated in terms of long-range planning, considering Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge and eight unincorporated villages are located within the boundaries of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore,” Echols adds.

When Hurricane Irene in 2011 cut new inlets through Pea Island and ripped open multiple sections of Highway 12 – the only road on the island.  It stranded about 2,500 people on Hatteras Island.  Local, state and federal expertise and resources were cobbled together to rebuild what local residents call “our lifeline.”

Meanwhile, at Cape Lookout National Seashore, Hurricane Irene pushed open an old inlet. In time, wind and waves closed the breach. With no roads or residents, officials could let nature find a remedy.

To Kenney, “We are laboratories for studying change.  Barrier islands are dynamic systems with moving sands, constantly being shaped, reshaped and relocated.”

Researchers from the National Park Service and several universities are involved with monitoring and studying coastal processes, habitats and wildlife at both sites.

Reprinted from the Tideland News

First of two parts

The chart shows the value of coastal ecosystems carbon sinks versus terrestrial forests and other types of habitat. Source: Cifuentes & Kauffman

As National Estuaries Day – Saturday – approaches, evidence of the value of preserving and re-creating these aesthetically pleasing chunks of coastal habitat is increasing.

Although it’s long been known that marshes and wetlands are key to the growth and survival of many marine species, a new study released earlier this month by Duke University and Oregon State University shines light on a lesser-known fact: destroying them releases copious amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

According to a Duke News press release, “The analysis in the study provides the most comprehensive estimate of global carbon emissions from the loss of these coastal habitats to date – 0.15 to 1.2 billion tons – and suggests there is a high value associated with keeping these coastal-marine ecosystems intact, as the release of their stored carbon costs roughly $6-$42 billion annually.”

“On the high end of our estimates, emissions are almost as much as the carbon dioxide emissions produced by the world’s fifth-largest emitter, Japan,” said Dr. Brian Murray, director for economic analysis at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions in Durham. “This means we have previously ignored a source of greenhouse gas emissions that could rival the emissions of many developed nations.”

The press release states that this carbon, captured through biological processes and stored in the sediment below mangroves, sea grasses and salt marshes, is called “blue carbon.” When these wetlands are drained and destroyed, the sediment layers below begin to oxidize. Once this soil, which can be many feet deep, is exposed to air or ocean water, it releases carbon dioxide over days or years.

The study examined the amount of carbon sequestered from the atmosphere by the slow accretion, over hundreds to thousands of years, of soils beneath these habitats. Previous studies had focused only on the amount of carbon stored in these systems and not what happens when these systems are degraded or destroyed and the stored carbon is released.

Linwood Pendleton

Todd Miller

“These coastal ecosystems are a tiny ribbon of land, only six percent of the land area covered by tropical forest, but the emissions from their destruction are nearly one-fifth of those attributed to deforestation worldwide,” said Dr. Linwood Pendleton, the study’s co-lead author and director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute.

“One hectare, or roughly two acres of coastal marsh, can contain the same amount of carbon as 488 cars produce in a year. Comparatively, destroying a hectare of mangroves could produce as much greenhouse gas emissions as cutting down three to five hectares of tropical forest.”

Todd Miller, director of the N.C. Coastal Federation, an environmental group long involved in efforts to preserve and enhance wetlands, hailed the study. “It adds to the level of information … about the value of these habitats,” he said.

What’s especially striking, Miller said, is that while the total amount of coastal mangrove and salt marsh is relatively small compared to the amount of rain forest in the world, the coastal habitat appears to play a much larger proportionate role in harboring the carbon that otherwise would be released to eventually contribute to global climate change.

In fact, he said, it’s believed that salt marshes worldwide are responsible “for taking up and sequestering about half the carbon” emitted each year by global transportation sources.

The critical role of these ecosystems for carbon sequestration has been overlooked, the Duke study said. “These coastal habitats could be protected and climate change combated if a system—much like what is being done to protect trees through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)—were implemented,” the press released stated. “Such a policy would assign credits to carbon stored in these habitats and provide economic incentive if they are left intact.”

“Blue carbon ecosystems provide a plethora of benefits to humans: they support fisheries, buffer coasts from floods and storms, and filter coastal waters from pollutants,” said Emily Pidgeon, senior director of Strategic Marine Initiatives at Conservation International and co-chair of the Blue Carbon Initiative, added in the Duke press release.

“Economic incentives to reverse these losses may help preserve these benefits and serve as a viable part of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and address climate change.”

Miller said that while the U.S. has not officially embraced “carbon credits,” it has been occurring, and some landowners in North Carolina and elsewhere in the country have participated in such programs, and utilities in Europe and here are “looking our way.”

If economic incentives for preservation of “carbon sinks’ take off, he added, that could enhance the ability to fight climate change.

Meanwhile, the federation also is engaged in potentially groundbreaking work to determine the impact that restoring coastal salt marshes could have on mitigating global climate change.

USGS scientists install devices to measure carbon uptake at North River Farms in Carteret County.

The U.S. Geological Survey early this year installed 35 measuring devices on the organization’s property at North River Farms in eastern Carteret County.

Through grants from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund and others, the federation and private partners have bought or obtained control of almost all of the 6,000-acre farm, and have since then been working to restore marsh and forest habitat that had been either severely compromised or destroyed by years of farming activity. So far more than 2,300 acres have been restored, and the goal is to restore a total of up to 5,100 acres within the next decade.

Volunteers and federation staffers have plugged old drainage ditches and spent countless hours putting in untold numbers of native marsh plants and trees in what is by far the largest project of its type in the state and one of the largest in the nation.

The idea has been to improve water quality in nearby shellfishing waters – vegetation filters out pollution and sediments before they reach the water – but Miller said the work also presented a perfect opportunity to glean some answers to a question about which there is little worldwide information: Just how much of a role can marsh habitat restoration play in lessening the impacts of climate change?

He said the research and partnership – which also includes N.C. State University and Duke – is measuring greenhouse gases released from the soils at the restored North River Farms site and will relate these measurements to salinity, vegetation type and to the global carbon budget.

The wetland restoration site at North River Farms provides an ideal location for measuring the gases in different types of restored habitats, he added, because in addition to salt marsh, it also includes restored bottomland hardwood forest.

It’s also near natural marshes and forests that can be used for comparing the differences between gas emissions from restored and natural areas. The USGS installed the measuring devices in the natural habitats, too.

Gas samples are collected every 45 minutes and analyzed for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The first phase of the project, which began early in 2012, involves measuring the emissions, and is expected to last about one year. Although USGS has not yet released any data, some should begin coming early next year. Miller said that if the early results are promising, there should be more work long-term. And if it turns out that restored marsh can play a major role in sequestering carbon, Miller said, the study should, like the Duke and Oregon study, serve to emphasize the need for more restoration and encourage preservation of existing marsh, which worldwide in recent years has been disappearing at what many consider and alarming rate.

The Duke-Oregon work was funded by the Linden Trust for Conservation and Roger and Victoria Sant. The paper, “Estimating Global ‘Blue Carbon Emissions from Conversion and Degradation of Vegetated Coastal Ecosystems,” is available online.

Friday: Oyster reef as carbon sinks

Related Story

• Journal Nature: Salt marsh carbon may play a role in slowing global warming

Figure 1: July 2012 Temperature anomalies Source: NOAA

If you thought it was hot in July in coastal North Carolina, you’re not alone. The month was the hottest month in recorded history for the United States. Following the exceptionally warm winter and early spring, we may be getting an early glimpse of how future climate will look.

On August 6, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reported that July was the single warmest month in the 117-year temperature history of the continental United States. During the month, over half the continental United States experienced temperatures more than 2 degrees above average, an unprecedented area and magnitude of warmth (Figure 1).

July’s record warmth was just the latest in an exceptional year of heat for the continental United States. A late June super-heat wave led to 208 locations tying or breaking their all-time highest temperature records, despite that June isn’t even the warmest month of the year. From Alaska to Arkansas, a vast swath of the country set or tied their highest-ever June temperatures during this heat wave (Figure 2).

And the hot summer is a continuation of the status quo for past several months. March was the warmest March in recorded history for the continental United States. So far, this year is more than 4 degrees warmer than the 20^th century average, smashing records of previous warm years (Figure 3).

All told, the past 12 months have been the warmest 12-month period in recorded history for the Unites States. In fact, since May of 2011, every month has been warmer than its climatological average, a 14-month stretch of warmer-than-average temperatures. What are the odds that 14 straight months would be warmer than average?

Of course, 14 straight months of anomalous warmth are more likely if the chance of warmth is better than 50/50. Since the 1980s, scientists have postulated that carbon dioxide-forced global warming would lead to global increases in the frequency of heat waves and droughts, in effect “stacking the odds” in favor of warmer conditions.One can assume there is a 50 percent chance that any given month will be warmer (or cooler) than average. The odds of having 14 such warmer-than-average months in a row, as we’ve had since May 2011, would thus be equivalent to the odds of flipping a coin heads 14 times in a row: one in 16,000. It should be noted here that this probability assumes that the chances of any given months being warmer or cooler than average are independent of all the other months, which isn’t necessarily true. In reality, the odds are probably slightly higher than one in 16,000, but difficult to quantify exactly.

In 1981, climatologist Jim Hansen of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, writing in the journal Science, hypothesized that “the creation of hot, dry conditions in much of the western two-thirds of the United States” as a result of additional atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Thirty-one years later, Hansen’s predictions appear substantiated, as the United States is currently in grips of the worst drought since the 1930s Dust Bowl. Almost two-thirds of the country is experiencing drought conditions, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is projecting that the 2012/2013 corn yield will be the lowest in 17 years due to “extreme heat and dryness” across the Great Plains. As a consequence, global food prices spiked 6% in July, led by a 17 percent increase in the price of cereals and a 23 percent surge in the price of corn (Figure 4).

As with any climatic changes, there are winners and losers. Locally, farmers in North Carolina may gain from the high corn prices, with the USDA projecting a 30 percent increase in N.C. corn production over last summer despite the drought conditions. Globally, however, rising world food prices tend to exacerbate political and social conflict, especially in developing countries, according to the World Bank.

Will the warmth continue? As far as the record books are concerned, it doesn’t matter: the first half of 2012 has been so warm that, even if temperatures for the rest of year are in line with 20^th century averages, 2012 will still be the warmest year in U.S. history, according to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville.

And with a developing El Niño historically favoring a warmer late fall in the central and eastern United States (Figure 5), it is likely that the second half of 2012 will continue to be warmer than average.

Globally, the hot summer of 2012 in the United States contrasts with cooler-than-average conditions in the United Kingdom and other locations. But the balance isn’t complete: Like every year since 1977, global temperatures in 2012 will be above the 20^th century average.

By 2030, global temperatures are expected to be 0.9 degrees warmer than today, rising to almost 2 degrees warmer than today by 2050. With such an increase in background warmth, hot months, and hot years, will undoubtedly become hotter.

So go ahead and pencil in 2012 as the warmest year in US history. Just don’t expect it to stay in the record books for very long.

MOREHEAD CITY – Stan Riggs seems to be on a mission these days. His goal is ambitious: To save our beautiful coast – its inlets and marshes and barrier islands – and in the process to save our coastal economy. To do that, though, he has to persuade us to change our ways.

Dr. Stanley Riggs

The East Carolina University professor and researcher has been, for more than 30 years now, the N.C. coast’s preeminent marine geologist. He’s poked more holes in its landmasses and sediments than probably any man alive – “Some people accuse us of causing sea-level rise with all our holes,” Riggs says. He’s walked, driven or boated along every inch of the coast from Calabash to Currituck – well, almost. He knows every creek and stream, spit and swamp, beach and dune.

“I know this system,” Riggs says. “It’s part of my world, of who I am. And I don’t want to see it screwed up. I care about these beautiful natural resources and I care about the people.”

So Riggs takes to the road preaching a message of change. One night could find him in Wilmington. The next, in New Bern or Raleigh or Manteo. Monday night, Riggs was at Carteret Community College for a local environmental group’s annual meeting.

“I have probably taken this picture over and over again in the last 10 years,” he told members of Carteret County Crossroads as a photo of a row of beach houses loomed large on the screen. The surf rolled beneath the houses. Stairways have collapsed; the tops of septic tanks, looking much like concrete caskets, poked from the eroded dunes.

“Is this good for tourism?” Riggs asked.

Most in the crowd agreed it was not.

Neither are the crumbled, jumbled pieces of asphalt; the flooded roadways; the army of bulldozers plugging gaps in sand dunes; the rocked shorelines; and the sandbags that armor expensive beachfront houses. All were the subjects of more photos.

“We haven’t been very good stewards,” Riggs said.

Mixed among the photographs were maps and charts that chronicle a million years of the coast’s geologic history. Islands have come and gone, and inlets have opened and closed. The ocean was once much higher than it is now and much lower.

Stan Riggs says the future of the N.C. coast could be one of seawalls or natural beauty.

“There will always be a shoreline, but it will always move,” Riggs noted. “It has always moved. Change is the only constant.”

In a perfect world, tourists wanting to buy their piece of beachfront paradise would heed the message. As would highway planners intent on building bridges over moving inlets or roadways over shifting sands. But in world we live, the houses and roads and bridges are built, followed by expensive and usually futile – thus the photos of crumbled highways and collapsing buildings – attempts to control the sea.

That has been the modern history of human development along our coastline, Riggs noted. It was never really sustainable, he said, and is even less so in era of accelerating sea-level rise.

The oceans have always risen when the temperature has warmed – Riggs has a chart to prove it. Water expands as it warms and melting glaciers release their volume into the oceans. The seas have been rising since the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago, and the rate of rise will increase this century as the climate warms dramatically. The scientific consensus is about a three-foot rise by the end of the century. It all depends on how much and how quickly the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica melt.

Guys like Riggs who poke holes everywhere know where the ocean was the last time the ice caps melted. It’s no mystery, not a matter of conjecture. It’s happened before and would happen again. “If we were to melt the rest of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica, the shoreline would move up to the Fall Line along our rivers,” he said. “That’s I-95, folks.”

Given that possibility, it makes even less sense to build our permanent structures so close to shore, Riggs said. The cost of protecting them will become astronomical and the coast’s natural resources and the beauty we derive from them will be destroyed in the rush to build walls and jetties and revetments, he notes, as will the coast’s tourist economy.

“What we have here in coastal North Carolina is unique in the world,” Riggs said. “If we are going to preserve what we have into the future, we have to change the way we do things.”

Instead of fighting the inevitable, we need to accept it, Riggs suggested. Once over that mental hurdle, we then need to start planning to adapt to a watery future, he said. In real terms, that means, for instance, that we could continue to maintain a roadway along the Outer Banks but understand that it will disappear into ocean, along with large chunks of the islands themselves.

Small ferries and water taxis leaving from a series of terminals at small rural villages, such Stumpy Point, Bayboro and Engelhard, could provide transportation to the islands. Once there, visitors could rent electric cars or bicycles to get around. They could hire charters to go on cruises to photograph dolphins and sharks and migrating whales. They could board helicopter for aerial tours. They could camp, fish, or go birding. They could step lightly.

“We don’t need to compete with Myrtle Beach and Florida,” Riggs said. “They don’t have what we have. Let’s use it.”

The vision, which is explored in depth in Riggs’ most-recent book, The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast, will seem preposterous to some, fanciful to others. The alternative – continuing as we have in the past – is unthinkable to Riggs.

“I may not see it happen,” he said, “but the tide has turned. I’ve given this talk everywhere and no one hoots or calls me names. People want to know what’s going on. They are starting to get it.”