Galveston Bay Foundation’s Post

Hoboken, New Jersey, USA. It was home to legendary crooner Frank Sinatra and is renowned as the birthplace of baseball. But today, this riverfront city is now making a name for itself as the testing ground for innovative climate mitigation efforts. In 2012, Hoboken was hard hit by Superstorm Sandy as major storm surges, high tides, and heavy rainfall flooded the city. Now, in partnership with the UN SDG Action Campaign’s SDG Local Action initiative, a comprehensive strategy for coastal and heavy rainfall flood mitigation is underway. What does that mean? In part, the construction of over 9,000 feet of flood walls! Read more about SDG Local Action’s efforts here: https://lnkd.in/ecVgM32e

Warmer waters in the Atlantic Ocean could fuel a strong and lengthy hurricane season. As someone who’s personally witnessed the devastation–environmentally and socially–that hurricanes leave behind, this deeply saddens me.  I hope we put more effort into protecting coastlines and island infrastructure from these hurricanes, that only continue to grow in force. This is just one more reminder that all of Earth’s ecosystems are connected, and we need more and more businesses that are working to restore balance to those ecosystems instead of stripping them of their capacity to heal. https://lnkd.in/en8MWKJK

Successful climate/environmental change adaptation is a social and justice issue also now confirmed by rhesus macaques (Following environmental disasters scientists expected more competition, but instead of becoming more competitive, individuals widened their social network and became less aggressive). A good reminder for the negotiations on the global goal on adaptation and climate finance 😉 https://lnkd.in/d2f3RynA

The Mawi blaze in Hawaii highlights the vulnerability of advanced economies to climate change. Despite technological advancements, early warning systems can be insufficient in the face of powerful climate-driven events. While we can control certain technologies, nature's elements like ocean temperature and air pressure remain beyond our complete understanding. Global human activities contribute to increasing instances of extreme events such as fires, droughts, and floods, which might become the new normal without urgent climate action. The interconnected nature of our atmosphere means that actions in one location affect others. Despite the inevitability of such events, there's a question of whether their impact can be mitigated through collective efforts. I express my solidarity and prayers for the people of Mawi and Hawaii facing the crisis. ♨

Bay Area and especially Sonoma County folks: are you familiar with the Laguna de Santa Rosa? No, it's not a lake, and no, it's not in Santa Rosa. But it IS the largest tributary to the Russian River and one of the largest freshwater wetland complexes in the state, internationally recognized by Ramsar. Read all about it, including a comprehensive new report from the San Francisco Estuary Institute designed to guide its restoration for decades to come, in my latest article for KneeDeep Times Magazine, a local publication covering climate change and adaptation. https://lnkd.in/gqKbvUef

The illusion of separateness must evolve, rapidly, to the profound realization of our deep interconnectedness with everything around us on this Planet (and beyond). What we do here in Chile, has effects in the Global North, and vice versa . Chile is responsible for 0.2% of all GHGs emissions. Chileans per capita emit 4 tonnes of CO2 a year (US emits 15 t per capita). Chile is highly vulnerable to climate change, meeting 7 of the 9 vulnerability criteria pronounced by the UNFCCC. 131 people have died because of the fires in Valparaiso, due to multiple factors, most importantly, because of climate change. Climate Justice?

I have said for years, it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in climate change because your insurance carrier does. “No other state has suffered more climate-related damage over the past several decades than the Lone Star State — not even #Florida, #California or #Louisiana. Home-insurance costs rose more in Texas than in any other state last year and over the past five years, according to S&P Global…In fact, #Texas tops every other state in damages because of billion-dollar weather disasters since 1980, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.” The 3 stooges in Austin are fully inept to tackle this major issue as they lack the foresight to see how climate change affects our economy. https://lnkd.in/gfNUuCzt

Our latest paper advocates for operational real time attribution of hurricane rainfall increases using storylines. Using such, we find that climate change increased Hurricane Ian's rainfall by 18%, nearly 3X Clausius-Clapeyron scaling of increased available moisture. https://lnkd.in/d3WJE3ET