You may have noticed we're almost done with January and outside it's just now feeling like winter and we could even have freezing precipitation this weekend. But in fact, we had record high temperatures in December and early January that included 19 days in the 70s and 7 days in the 80s. And this comes after the last few years of Texans living through severe heat, drought, devastating ice and snowstorms, worsening hurricanes, and deadly flooding. The experts say it's thanks to climate change, and it could get worse. For a look at what's next in our Texas weather, we have Dr. Carrie Cook, climate system science professor at the University of Texas. Dr. Cook, thanks so much for being with us.
-Well, thanks for having me.
-So, Dr. Cook, data shows that the Earth's surface temperature is increasing. What does that mean for us in terms of severe weather events?
-Well, it means we're going to have more severe weather events. If you think about the temperature rising, everyone probably understands that on a warmer surface there's more evaporation. Sure. And this loads more water vapor into the atmosphere. And so when storms occur, there tend to be more intense and there'll be even more frequent intense storms, but what we define as an intense storm will get more frequent and the strongest storms will get even stronger. And that is not something we want to see more of for sure.
And with these scientific models predicting more warming, how much warmer are we talking? And apparently that's getting harder to predict.
Well, it's not that it's getting harder to predict. Our climate models are improving all the time, but there are a number of climate models that are run around the world and they give say for example for the year 2100 is a good benchmark mark to think about. They give predictions of somewhere between 8 and 12 maybe 14 degrees Fahrenheit warming for the globe at that time. They give a range.
None of them say there's going to be no warming.
All of them say the warming is going to be significant.
But they may differ by a few degrees.
But on top of that is another big uncertainty and that is how much the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere is going to increase. You know our climate models are based on the laws of physics. you know, but trying to predict human behavior for how much, you know, CO2 is going to be released into the atmosphere is much more difficult. How is this all going to play out through the century? And so, not knowing how much CO2 will be in the atmosphere by 2100 is the biggest source of uncertainty in our predictions. And that's a scary prospect and it may seem obvious to some, but let's have a quick science lesson refresher.
Can you reiterate the impact of burning fossil fuel and adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and why that is so harmful?
So when we burn fossil fuels, we add CO2 and other greenhouse gases for example methane into the atmosphere. Now what happens with those greenhouse gases? The surface of the earth is emitting radiation to cool itself. But the greenhouse gases absorb that radiation and turn some of it back down toward the surface. If we had no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the average surface temperature of the Earth would be -2.5° F. It'd be a frozen Earth. We know that's not the case.
There's a natural greenhouse effect mostly caused by water vapor in the atmosphere. But what we're doing now is ratcheting up that greenhouse effect that the surface temperature is very sensitive to. For you and your colleagues in climate science, this connection between human activity that adds carbon dioxide to the air and global warming, it's settled science. It's not debated.
But in other circles, it seems to cause a lot of debate, perhaps in political ones. What's your reaction to that as a scientist?
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'I've been studying this for decades and it's very disconcerting when you start speaking to someone who says, "No, that's not correct." When you know they're not in the field, they're an armchair expert'
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Well, it's kind of hard to deal with, you know. You know, I'm not an expert in everything. Maybe not in very many things, but climate, I'm an expert. I've been studying this for decades. You know, and it's very disconcerting when you start speaking to someone who says, "No, that's not correct." When you know they're, you know, they're not in the field, they're an armchair expert.
Yes. Exactly. And so very few people now deny the fact that climate change is going on.
The observations are completely irrefutable. It's getting warmer. Everyone knows. We can even feel it. And it's getting warmer at a rate that was predicted by the climate models. And what do you think are going to be the consequences of people not only not understanding but not taking seriously the science you've explained?
I think the consequences of that will be and are inaction on climate. Um the argument is that the cost of changing our energy systems to reduce CO2 emissions is more expensive than just dealing with the climate change that comes along. Um and so if you sort of ignore the fact that we're having more intense storms and more flooding and heat and heat stress and you know people dying of heat stress then you start not putting money and effort into switching our our energy systems into renewables.
And so for the people at home that are concerned by this, what needs to happen to ensure that this pattern doesn't continue or to help us as much as we can contribute to not continuing this pattern?
Well, it's a matter of I believe government priorities and where where attention and money is spent. We can make individual small efforts for sure, but we really need to really shift our energy systems and right now the burden of doing that is on the states and on the cities. The federal government is not interested in doing that now and that's not really sustainable. Dr. Cook, we appreciate you sharing your expertise with us. Dr. Carrie Cook, climate science professor at the University of Texas. Thank you. Thanks so much for watching. Be sure to like and [music] subscribe and leave us a comment below to let us know your thoughts on this video. And don't forget, you can watch full episodes of Austin Insight for [music] free in the PBS app.
