 Hi everyone. Thank you so much for attending Climate Change Front and Center today. Beth Daly, the editor and general manager of the conversation. I'm so thrilled you'll be joining us for an amazing panel. Before I start introducing everyone. Some of you might be new to the conversation so I want to let you know a little bit about us. We're a global online media organization. Our content is written by academics and edited by our fabulous team of subject specific editors. All our content that we produce in a collaboration goes out on the Associated Press Wire, Yahoo News, MSN, and to over 700 news outlets every single day. We're read about 23 million times a month now. And everything from the Washington Post to CNN to tiny papers that no longer have expert journalistic staff on staff anymore, like adding statesmen to the kids have some where our source of credible information. So before we start I wanted to just take one minute to remind you that this webinar is being recorded. It's available afterwards. We do ask you to type your questions into the Q&A. Please don't raise your hand. The chat is disabled, just to keep the conversation flowing. So let's get started. I just like to introduce Becky Bollinger is assistant state climatologist at Colorado State, I'm sorry Colorado Climate Center Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science. I always kind of say that the wrong way her research focuses on climate variability climate extremes and drought. She's written for the conversation on the new normal seen in temperature data. She's a deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice data center part of the University of Colorado boulders. Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences. She specializes in the connections among ice climate ocean and ecosystem and in particular the Greenland ice sheet in the Arctic, although she knows an awful lot about Antarctica as well. She's a research and high impact journals, such as Science and Nature, and she has been tested and she's testified before the US Congress and is a lead author for the annual no Arctic report card, which I have read and reported on in my past life as a climate reporter for Boston Globe, Shannon Van Zand is a professor and executive associate dean in the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University. She has an intersection of affordable housing disaster impacts resilience and recovery with particular interest in how residential land use partners exacerbates or mitigate exposure to natural hazards, specifically flooding. She's an author of the 2002 book. Engage Research for Community Resilience to Climate Change. I'm thrilled to have such a fabulous team of female scientists here and researchers to talk about this incredibly important subjects that's facing us all. And at this juncture, I'm going to turn this over to Jenny. Weeks our senior environment editor. And Jenny, if you wouldn't mind just give a few a quick file of yourself instead of me doing it and then we'll let you start. Thank you, Beth. So I'm Jenny weeks I have been at the conversation for six years. I work with our other environment energy editor Stacy Morford who is here, lurking behind the scenes. And together, we look for scholars who are doing interesting work on climate reach out to them for articles that will help people understand what's going on. And we are so excited to have this great panel today to talk with. I have been a freelance journalist and further in the past worked in government and academia so you know, many sectors have parts to play in trying to make progress on this issue and a lot of pieces have to work together it's very complicated and it's really great when we can have scholars like this help us kind of figure out what's going on. Let me just say a little bit about why we're doing this webinar right now. Many of you probably know about the intergovernmental panel on climate change which is often referred to as the IPCC. It's an enormous coordinating body of scientists all around the world who are experts on many many different aspects of climate change. There's out giant reports called assessment reports about every three or four years that really sort of roll together what those scientists see as the best analysis of what is going on with the climate the idea is to inform government so governments can take action on what's happening. When they release one of these assessment reports it comes out in several parts. The first part of the current assessment which I believe is the fifth assessment came out last fall it was about the science of climate change so temperatures are being recorded where what is happening with sea level trends what are greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere doing. Next week, Part two comes out which is on impacts and adaptation so it's on the impact what are these temperature and greenhouse gas trends doing to Earth's physical systems, and how can we adapt to them. This is a two part topic we have for today. For our speakers to talk about, and later this spring Part three which is on mitigation which is the climate speak word for reducing greenhouse gases and slowing climate change comes out so there will be a whole new chunk of coverage next week and then another wave in another month or so on what experts think is happening and what we can do about it so you know it's great to have some experts to help us sort of sift through a lot of this. So first speakers bios so let me just start off. I want to ask all three of you a two part question so we can just sort of probably go around in the order that Beth introduced you. So, since we're doing impacts and adaptation. Why don't we start by each of you talking about what are some of the most significant impacts of climate change that you are seeing in the region or sector that you focus on in your research. So, thank you for having me on. It's an honor to be here. I am really excited about this report coming out because it really brings in the human component right when you're talking about science. Sometimes it's hard to connect it, but this one's really going to connect to what people are currently experiencing. And this isn't something that's out in the future. This is something that's happening now and we are experiencing impacts right now from a changing climate, particularly when we're talking in the United States. We know that we have already experienced an increased frequency in in our hottest temperatures in our hot extremes. We know that in some areas, particularly where I live in Colorado and in the western part of the country, we are experiencing more frequent drought and more severe droughts. And we are experiencing increases in wildfire numbers and acreage. And these are the things that bring climate change to a really personal level and it's not just something abstract. So these are definitely things that that are happening now. And those are the things that that will be covered in that next report. Great. Thanks, Twyla. Tell us about the Arctic and how what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Yeah, you hit that nail on the head. So the Arctic is is one of those places where we really clearly see many of the components of what we call the cryosphere, which is all of Earth's frozen elements. So we have glaciers, the Greenland ice sheet, we have frozen ground also called permafrost and we also have ice that forms on the top of the ocean sea ice and the Arctic is actually warming more rapidly than the rest of the planet. And because it's so full of these different frozen components, all of those are really sensitive to small changes in temperature. I mean, just a fraction of a degree is as one of my colleagues say the difference between ice skating and swimming. So what we're seeing are changes in all of these different components and all of them have these fingers that connect down to us in the low and mid latitudes. I often think of looking at the earth from space where you can't see any of the country boundaries and you can kind of see swirls of clouds that seem to transfer and move all across the earth's surface. And that's how I think of these changes in the Arctic really moving their fingers down. So as we're losing land ice from the Greenland ice sheet and from glaciers, we're adding volume to the ocean and experiencing coastal erosion, sea level rise, salty ocean water getting into freshwater resources like drinking water, a lot of these coastal infrastructure challenges. So as we see reductions in sea ice, we're changing how bright the surface of the Arctic Ocean is and a dark, dark ocean surface is better at taking up sunlight. And so that introduces more heat to the ocean, which adds to how our climate is warming. And permafrost also has one of these kind of vicious amplifying cycles where as we're thawing permafrost in the ground, that allows different microbes and things in the ground to become active and actually release more carbon dioxide and methane, some of these powerful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and further enhance the warming that we experience very far away. So despite it being a place that most people may not visit or think of often these Arctic changes and Antarctic changes really do reach down to where we are far away. Got it. Thanks. Shannon freezing and thawing is not, I think, you know, first on the mind on people's minds on the Gulf Coast, but tell us what's going on there. Certainly. Yeah, I think, you know, based on what Becky and Twila have said, we're experienced in our communities we're experiencing a much greater frequency of sea level rise and urban flooding, you know, from the sea level rise and from our more frequent and more severe weather events. Many of you will remember Hurricane Harvey, which struck the Texas Gulf Coast in 2017 as an unprecedented rain event that dropped up to 50 inches of rain on the city of Houston in just about 36 hours. It was nothing we ever anticipated, but I think one thing that we're learning in our communities is that disasters are no longer kind of acute one off events, they are very often ongoing and chronic in many, in many ways when Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, I just to kind of see how things were going I checked on their disaster declarations, and I saw that at the time of Hurricane Harvey hitting Houston, Houston had three additional disaster declarations currently in place, going back to the 2008 Hurricane Ike, which was also a very severe event that affected the Texas coast, but also including two other major floods that had happened since that time and so that was a real kind of eye opener that at least for our more vulnerable areas, being in a state of disaster is is not a rare event, it's to be expected and frankly it has to be planned for and that is a form of adaptation to the future disasters. Got it thanks so you know that segues right into what I wanted to ask a little bit about next which is so adaptation can mean a lot of different things. Let's just go around again and so talk a little bit about you know in the regions you look at and think about and you know where you're where you're teaching and researching. What are some of the, what you would say most urgent things people need to do to adapt to what's changing, and you know if there's, if there's been enough time that people have really sort of keyed into it, how's it going. So I think the most important thing you need to do is to be aware and you know listening to things like this and knowing these reports that are coming out is that first step of understanding what your risks are. So, you need to be aware of the climate that you live in. What are your risks, what hazards are most likely to occur, and then what is your vulnerability to them. So, for example, if we would be incredibly vulnerable to a hurricane, because we don't we don't build things with a hurricane in mind but the risk is very low so it's not something we plan for. So you kind of need to take into account what your risks are, and what your vulnerabilities are, and then you take that information and hopefully can address that vulnerability and reduce that vulnerability. So that when the hazard occurs, hopefully you're less likely to have a high impact disaster, because you're prepared for it. And a lot of communities are doing this, a lot of state governments are doing this for example Colorado we have a, a state drought mitigation plan. And we use that regularly when we know that we are going into a severe drought, so that hopefully we don't have the high level of impact we would have if we didn't prepare for it at all and I think that that is one of the most important things to do on a state and local level. Let me just, if I can stick with you for a minute because Boulder had that such that dramatic wildfire back right I guess it was right after Christmas, where it was like running right through the suburbs there so why don't you just maybe sort of talk a little about sort of take take that fire and talk about adaptation and like what does it mean in that context you know to bring it into a specific example. So, for Colorado specifically our environment is so rapidly changing we are seeing wildfire behaviors that we didn't see 10 years ago or 20 years ago, and the Marshall fire is a really good example of that, that there are risks and vulnerabilities that we didn't even know were, were possible. And now there are so many front range communities, not just around Boulder area, but to the north and to the south where we line up right on the foothills, where we have that similar risk and so that is something that now we have that information that that is a risk that can occur. That is something that is already in place to start addressing to reduce the impact and so hopefully we wouldn't have something to that magnitude, but wildfire is so particular, as it changes, you know, sometimes it can catch us off guard because we don't exactly know what, what the range of possibilities are that can happen. And then when it does happen, we do know and so in the past, I would say five years, particularly even in the past two years, we've seen fire behavior really quickly evolve and so that is something that we're going to look at further into how to plan for that because there is a changing climate component in that. I mean I would say just in the past five or six years that the stories we do about wildfire now are almost year round, which reflects that wildfires happen more and more there's a season is just kind of becoming one big loop and a lot of places so. And what's happened, it's almost like for me specifically in Colorado, it's like what's happening in California, I can expect that to be a risk for Colorado in the future so how does California respond. And so that's something that that we can take and say, you know, 10 years from now what California is experiencing, you know, we need to expect that to happen in Colorado, and, and go from there and make those decisions. Yeah, while I guess you can't really look for another model in the Arctic for adapting to warming because it's so extreme but talk a little bit about what you know communities up there are having to deal with. And I might mention both what communities in the Arctic are dealing with but also all these Arctic changes that come down to us so for the, you know, many thousands of people who live in the Arctic. They are experiencing fundamentally different landscapes and seasons. We some of the problems we are just talking about wildfire there have been incredibly extreme wildfire events over recent summers in the Arctic. We've detected wildfire carbon all the way up to the top of the Greenland ice sheet and to the North Pole, but all many of the folks in the Arctic are also dealing with the challenges of sea level rise. We see already Alaskan communities that have needed to entirely move because of coastal erosion. And when we see fine of permafrost or frozen ground that can cause roads to buckle. So there's no signs, no longer stay stable buildings can collapse so there's a lot of big changes for infrastructure. There's also these changes that are influencing for example food security and food access in the Arctic. And you see seasons changing and animals are responding to that or perhaps animals are moving in different places at different times. And the loss of sea ice also is really changing where a lot of marine animals exist what they're able to do in their life cycles, and removing sea ice from the Arctic coast also make them more vulnerable to sea level rise and a lot of waves from storm which can make Arctic coasts erode more quickly. But these changes that are happening in in the Arctic are really reaching down to areas far away and sea level rises just such a good example of this, and we sometimes forget all of the different implications of sea level rise so it's not just maybe that things are go, you know, the ocean is rising but it's really going to influence big storm events so that you're going to get kind of instances of flooding in places that have never experienced flooding. What I was mentioning earlier as far as ocean water being able to be present in places that wasn't before and interrupting freshwater, we can really cause problems with sewage and water systems in our coast. And I found it very interesting to reflect on how we have really modern day built our infrastructure, assuming very stable coastlines and boundaries, and that sometimes makes it difficult for us to start to contemplate how to adapt to things. So for example with sea level rise, people begin to think about what retreat might look like, but if you're a local politician and you're planning for, for example, for your local county, people moving out of your county might cause problems with your tax base and economic issues there's many interrelated problems that we may have to in our adaptation, not just think of our buildings and our roads, but also think about our policies and how we actually kind of keep our economies going in different ways and come together to help our neighbors. This is when you look at the kind of scenarios of the future and the scenarios that get us to a future that sees the kind of least harm, all of those scenarios really depend on cooperation. And I think it's valuable to think of that as cooperation, not just at international government to government levels but also the cooperation that we have locally and regionally because being able to depend on each other and cooperate together for sharing resources or building more resilient infrastructure, those are all really, really key. Absolutely yeah and Shannon that I think segues right into your focus on resilience right. It really does I'm listening to Becky and twyla speak you probably saw me nodding a lot and I also was scribbling down a lot of notes because the things that they're bringing up are exactly the kinds of things that we want the need communities to do I'm a, I'm trained as a city planner so I'm very interested in predicting the future that's what planners do is to look into the future and try to figure out how change can change, you know, is the trajectory that we're on the trajectory that we want to be on and I think it's critical especially as the climate is changing so quickly that we do look forward to say well what is going to happen in five years or 10 years or 30 years, and recognizing that things are happening so much faster now than they used to. One of the things with mitigation and adaptation is just the language that we use to talk about it the climate scientists use the term adaptation to talk about a lot of the things that planners would characterize as mitigation, things like climate migration or land use planning for example that we do as part of our way of minimizing the potential damage from a hazard event. We're using people in the floodplain, for example, which a lot of people tell me, well we don't build in the floodplain, but we absolutely do build in the floodplain particularly in states like Texas that that are relatively low lying and have fairly little fairly few tools. And we're not like Colorado in the sense of our control over land Colorado has a ton more control over their land than Texas does. And that is one of those policy issues that that twilight addresses is that we need to give communities the tools that they need to protect themselves. And right now very a lot of our coastal communities, especially along the Gulf Coast, don't have those tools available, or if they do they're not using them as aggressively as they probably should be. I also wanted to talk about something that Becky brought up which is this idea of risk and vulnerability and vulnerability is a particular interest to me and I think what Becky referred to was a lot about physical vulnerability are our buildings built to withstand certain types of disasters, but the other type of vulnerability that I want to bring up and that I feel really strongly about is social vulnerability. So when we are differentiating social and physical vulnerability, we're really looking in social vulnerability at the characteristics households that make them less or better able to anticipate respond to react to and recover from disasters. And those are those are characteristics like gender household composition race ethnicity income education level disability, things like that. And some of those are very, are very highly correlated with space, the spatial distribution, race and ethnicity and income in particular have a very strong determining determining power, in terms of people's exposure to disasters that I like to say, low income people live in low quality homes in low line areas, and that captures those dimensions of risk and vulnerability that Becky was referring to where the low line areas refers to the risk. How exposed are you to a certain type of disaster. I'm usually thinking about flooding but it holds for fire and drought and a lot of other things as well. Low quality homes refers to that kind of physical vulnerability. Are we building to codes and codes and dimensions that help buildings withstand the different kinds of disasters. Along the Gulf Coast, it's often related to elevation, and it may be related to things like hurricane straps or impact resistant windows, but in other parts of the country it may be related, you know, to earthquake engineering types of issues or you know, combustible materials as how much of the exterior of your home can be made out of combustible material versus non combustible. So that refers to the kind of physical vulnerability and then the social of course are these household characteristics that are not spatially independent. And they, we put people in harm's way and I think particularly as we see rapid growth along the coast. I mean Texas is a very rapidly growing state and a lot of that growth is along the Gulf Coast, despite the fact that it is at great risk of both hurricanes and urban flooding. As we grow into those areas, we really need to be, we're doing two things. Number one, replacing more people in harm's way. Number two, we're reducing the ability of the environment to actually provide environmental services. So when Twila mentions Arctic communities that are having to relocate, we're also seeing entire communities along the Louisiana Gulf Coast having to relocate because of the erosion of the Mississippi Delta and sea level rise we're also seeing changes in the agricultural crops that we can grow in certain places because of saltwater incursion and a lot of those lands actually absorb the water as it falls. Houston is a really good example of this. A lot of the development in Houston is West of Houston towards San Antonio, which when I was a girl growing up in this part of the country was rice fields. And it was, you know, filled with water, it was like a sponge. And now those areas are new suburban developments that are paved over with impervious surfaces. And so not only are they increasing the runoff, but they're decreasing the ability of the land to do its job. And combined with our land economy, you know, how the land, how people are able to settle on the land, we're placing those most socially vulnerable in those places that are most physically vulnerable and high risk for those families. And so I think assessing the social vulnerability along with the physical vulnerability like Becky mentioned is really important, knowing who is in your community, and what kinds of assistance they're going to need. And I like to think about it as, you know, you can, you can reduce social vulnerability in a couple of ways. You can either move people away from the risk, which is, is not, is that can be a fairly efficient way to do it through land use planning, and helping the land to higher areas and to, you know, not, not increase their exposure. But we also can be reducing their social vulnerability through anti poverty programs, or through federal assistance through making sure, and this has been a big issue in Texas, making sure that the federal money that does come into the state is going to those areas that need it most. And again, the political economy of local and state government often means that that money flows to the same people that it's always flow to those people who are politically connected, those areas that have always gotten the attention of local government and state government, and, and not to the people who really need it and that so that exacerbates the impacts of a disaster, and reduces the resilience of a community over time. I have a lot more to say but I'm going to stop there. Great, thank you. I do have one clarification question from a listener who wanted you to just explain a little bit more about why Texas has less control over land use than Colorado does they wanted to know is that to do with whether it's federally controlled land or is it zoning laws or what what it what accounts for that difference. Both of those are true. Colorado has a lot more federally controlled land than Texas does. And in Texas, the county has no land use controls. And so we can only control land use within cities that have adopted zoning. And of course, many people know that Houston is the largest city in the country that does not have zoning. I will say it does have other ways of regulating its land use, although I would probably argue that zoning would be more effective. But outside well and another thing and another tidbit about Houston is that Houston is the fourth largest city in the country, but about half of that population is located outside the city of Houston in Harris County. So Harris County has about 500,000 people that are in the county not in the city. They are not able to control the land use controls. They are not able, the county itself is not able to control the land uses. There are a lot of municipal utility districts that do allow those communities to control some of their land. But in general, you know, Texas is a what we would call a low reg state, it's a state that prides itself on not having regulations that attributes its business friendly economy to having a low level of regulations where other states have a different approach and have a high level of regulations and you know that's what keeps us inexpensive and it's what keeps us attractive to businesses. But it also tends to limit the ability of local communities to protect their residents. Thanks for that. Twila here's a question for you we have a listener who would like to have you explain the sea ice feedback loop in a little more detail and describe whether that's something that people not in the Arctic but worried about climate change should be concerned about. Great question and this kind of vicious amplifying loop that we have with sea ice is something that all of us need to be concerned about and here's why. I'm imagining again that globe from space and the whole Arctic is an ocean and usually and in the past that ocean is mostly covered with frozen seawater or sea ice and that sea ice is going to get snow falling on it in winter. Imagine looking out your window to see a fresh pile of new snow it's bright white and you've got to put your sunglasses on right, but then if you think of those satellite pictures of the earth from space, and you look think about what those oceans look like they look as black and that difference between this really bright sea ice surface and the dark ocean surface is just the same difference as wearing a white T shirt or a black T shirt outside during the day. So that bright sea ice that we used to have much more of in the Arctic helped to reflect solar radiation and heat back out to space so it helped cool our earth system. What's happening now is that we're losing that sea ice we're exposing this dark ocean that dark ocean is much better at taking up solar radiation and so that ocean starts to heat, and that makes it harder for sea ice to then form in fall, and the ocean will hold on to the heat and release that heat in winter and then fall. And so we get more heat entering our earth system, and that heat doesn't stay in the Arctic, it gets involved in how the atmosphere is moving how the ocean is moving and it moves around the planet. And because that ocean water is getting warm it's harder and harder to produce more of this sea ice. And so that's this vicious amplifying loop and unfortunately we are in a place where we expect all of the really except for the very most kind of aspirational scenarios of reducing future polluting gases and greenhouse gases on that for the pathways we're on right now or that we see under current international commitments, we do expect to be losing all of that sea ice during occasional summers, starting around the mid 2030s. So this is something that's well underway now and we are going to see this issue stick around at least for several decades and depending on what humans do it will continue to get worse as we head on towards the end of our century. Got it thanks for that. A question for Becky, one degree, I'm assuming of warming might not sound like much so can you talk about how one degree of warming could have such a big impact on the environment and also what would two degrees of warming mean since there's quite a good chance we may end up with two degrees of warming. And when we say that we're always talking about compared to pre industrial times, especially for the US West. So I sometimes have a problem when we talk about just one number for the entire globe for a very long time period because it loses all meaning when you say, you know one degree of global warming in the next 30 years. So if you think of it, that one degree is not just changing the average temperature at a location, it's changing the entire distribution of what we experience at a location. So for example, in the West, if you, you know, you typically experience a climate where here's your average and then you have colder and warmer on either side that's our normal bell distribution where you can get colder temperatures and you can get warmer temperatures. Well when you change the average that's not the only thing that's changing you're changing that entire distribution, and that can change in a variety of different ways, not just warming the average, but you could be warming where that that warmer extremes is is going to happen more frequently so what only happened once every 100 years can now happen once every 20 years, and then what never happened before could now happen once every 100 years. On the website, you are still getting cold extremes. And if you increase the variability with climate change, it's possible that you're still going to have the same number of cold extremes that you had before. So, there's a whole bunch of different things that can happen it was very location specific. In addition, the precipitation could also be changing. And so, these are things that when you just take that one degree of warming. You're, you're changing the variability and the distribution of all these different factors. And so one of the things, particularly in the West that we've seen is that one degree warming is shifting our entire distribution of temperatures. So even if you don't change the precipitation, we are now seeing that droughts are becoming more temperature driven droughts and that is because, even though the air is warmer and can hold more water vapor. It's not and so that air is becoming drier. So think of you, you have a tube of water and this is the temperature this is how much water it can hold. And if it's not temperature it means it can hold more water, but if it's not now there's less the ratio of water is less than what it could have been that air is drier, and that is exacerbating our drought conditions so even that tiny bit of warming and not changing the distribution at all. Now you have a more serious drought situation and that's just one example of how a little bit of warming can make a big difference in terms of extremes and and what can happen. Do you have anything about two degrees. You know one degree. Yeah, it's going to be the same thing basically what I see is that how different things are now from where they were 20 years ago, you know 20 years ago, our droughts were not necessarily as temperature driven as they are now. And I would say that it's just going to be a little bit different than what we're experiencing now so that is how you know I would see the difference in adding another degree of warming basically on on the warming that we've already experienced and the changes we've already experienced that what is normal for us now is is going to change again. And so basically the droughts that we experience now are going to be not as severe when we look back on them 30 years from now 20 years from now, and that's how I see that one degree versus two degree change. Okay, thanks. We have a listener who would like to know from Shannon, they say I'm in a conservative rural town just getting going on serious I hope attempts to reduce emissions. We are getting trees planted any thoughts as to next steps for elected officials and staff and I think, you know, they're even even granting what you said about you know a lot of counties in Texas not having some powers and stuff, what kind of things at the local level can communities do. Yeah I think that's a great start I would I would recommend engaging the community leaders and developing a plan, a climate change plan. It may be part of their comprehensive plan if they have one. And if they don't have a comprehensive plan, they ought to consider that that that possibility. It's a way of assessing what the future will hold, and also developing consensus around actions that the community can take. So planting would be one of the actions that might come out of such a plan, but going through the planning process will identify a lot of other actions that the community can take, both to mitigate and, as well as adapt because I think we're at a point now where we're not going to mitigate all the effects we're experiencing the effects now so it's no longer an option to to halt climate change we have to limit it and adapt to it. And so that adaptation can be explored through a comprehensive plan, particularly, you know, developing a good fact basis for that plan is really important. And that would involve assessing your risk and your vulnerability like Becky described and I kind of elaborated on a little bit, you've got to know who's in your community. You've got to know how they're going to grow and how they expect to grow in the future or decline in the future as a lot of rural towns are experiencing population loss. But also what it's what it's land use can handle in terms of activities and where development should occur or should not occur. If development is occurring and and if it's not then the attraction of economic development to the community. If it's in a very high risk area, then looking at how the community can move over time, and that may be moving within the area or in some cases it may be moving away from the area, as we've seen with some of the Arctic communities, and with some of the communities in those communities. Certainly we hope that doesn't happen. And we do want to be aware of the social and cultural issues related to the, the community's history and the community's present population, but talk to the community and make it an issue in community elections in anything that any opportunity that you have to to have people think about it and talk about it and understand what the consequences may be for for your community. The more you're going to be able to get them involved in a planning process that can help you address those changes going forward. Great thanks. Question for Twyla. Can you please share your most unexpected Arctic experience. I'm guessing that's quite a list. Yes, I would have to say I love when I have the opportunity to visit and travel there and one of the things that come to mind I'm tempted to tell a story of meeting with local hunters there but I actually want to point out something that was very early in my career when I was in graduate school, and we were just starting to get good and repeat satellite imagery and satellite data from the ice sheet, and we were interested in these lakes that form on the outer margins of the Greenland ice sheet in the summer. And we went there, we set up our camp next to this lake that was you know more than a mile wide more than 40 feet deep we got in our little blow up boat and we'd boat around on this lake we were hoping it would drain while we were there so we could watch it drain and see where all that water went it went over the surface of the ice sheet or under the bottom. So we had to drain while we were there we were really disappointed. We couldn't see satellite images very often and we had to wait for the next summer to go back and we got back. And we checked the instruments and it turned out this entire lake had drained in less than an hour and a half out so flows out of this lake down into an underneath the ice sheet that more than the discharge of Niagara Falls. And one of these instances where this thing was happening so much more rapidly and dramatically than we expected. And I think it's a little bit of a good metaphor for how science has been learning about changes in polar places because it was before we had satellite data which is true even in really the mid 90s. There, it was very hard to look at, you know Antarctica is a whole continent Greenland ice sheet covers the world's largest island. We weren't taking, we weren't considering that these ice sheets could change very rapidly and that they needed to be part of this kind of, you know, couple decades conversation about climate change but then as we started to get the data from satellite, we realized that actually these environments were changing very rapidly and so that's why I know for myself many other people who are my age or earlier I didn't really have climate change classes in my K through 12 education. You know this didn't this was a non issue I wasn't hearing about it. And I think that's common for people to kind of say wait why do I need to pay attention. This is like this brand new thing and I think it's one of those things where we continue to realize how many changes are happening and changes are in many cases happening more rapidly than we expected them to, and in places and with the complexity that we didn't expect and so in that way it is something where we sort of all need to catch up and get on forward with both the adaptation part because there are things that we've already done to the earth system it's baked in sea level rise is coming. It's here and it's going to continue. And the mitigation part where we do still have an opening right now where human action can have a significant influence on this climate future and the question that Becky was addressing earlier about the kind of, you know, small degree differences. Unfortunately, for the earth system, a tenth of a degree degree is not a small change we have humans over the last 10,000 years you know built up all of our society in a climate that's barely changed kind of tenths of degrees and we're now shooting this temperature up and it definitely for different frozen parts of our earth system. We can reach thresholds and they are likely to appear between that one and a half degree and two degree global warming that suddenly put into place more of these amplifying loops and would really kind of send the earth system on a trajectory of change that human action would no longer be able to influence and dampen. So that's really a large part of my concern is that we take action while our human actions are still really going to have a big and important impact on the future. Thank you that was great and I want to just circle back to what you said about you know, getting satellite data while you were in grad school and not having had that before and because I know that these all these issues can be really overwhelming, especially when the impacts are getting so intense and so visible, but I want to just remind people listening that you know before World War Two, we didn't have satellites. We didn't have high speed computing, we didn't have radar and those are the three technological developments that made modern weather forecasting possible. So you know, before then, I mean we had like balloons that went up and stuff but it was very crude and you know compared to what we have now and I mean if you think back to things like the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, their way of trying to know if a blizzard was coming was to go look out the Northwest window. So, you know, I think that one sort of hopeful part of this whole discussion is the way that scientific understanding and you know the tools we have and the capacity we have to use them and to think about what's happening are advancing really fast. Fast enough, I don't know but but there are a lot of really smart people out there, you know, thinking about these things in many, many complicated ways that I think find that really heartening. Becky we have a question from a listener who is worried about water in the West and wants to know why the Colorado Colorado River seems to have less and less water and if there is any way to stop the loss. Yeah, the Colorado River is such a complicated beast of an issue that people are still grappling with, and it is definitely something that is going to have to come up with some new solutions over what we've done. So, we know that the West is drier. And since the 1920s there was a compact for the Colorado River and how that water was going to be divvied up between the states that have some little piece of that water and it was going to be this even distribution of water between the upper basin states like Colorado Wyoming in Utah versus the lower basin states like California, Nevada and Arizona. The problem was was those decisions were made over a climate that doesn't exist anymore. And so we try to continue to operate the Colorado River based on a climate that is no longer in existence and that is making the situation worse, particularly because the delivery of water to the lower basin states is expected to be what it always was when the upper basin is where that water starts. So our water starts as this mountain snowpack. And we do still have mountain snowpack, but because of climate change, we have increased frequency and severity of droughts that is impacting how much snowpack there is and how much that sends down the river. And we also know with those warmer temperatures, we're seeing an increase in evaporative losses from the whole system. And so what that means is that the amount of water that that starts this whole system is not as much as it was. And so the way that we need to plan around that is we need to stop thinking of the pie as being this large, and that this side gets this amount and this side gets this amount. We don't have the pie that large anymore and we can live with what we have, but we need, we need the people who make the decisions on the Colorado River to realize that the pie is now this big, and the decisions that we make are based on a pie that is this big. And I've said it before that Lake Powell and Lake Mead are the largest reservoirs for the Colorado River that, you know, the Lake Powell is for those upper basin states are basically our savings account, and Lake Mead is that water for the lower basin states and where they are now they reached, you know, their, their highest levels in the 90s. And since 2000 2002 drought, they've lowered, and each drought takes them down much further and wet period gives a little bit of recovery, but not a full recovery so it's almost that we're one step forward, two steps back, one step forward, two steps back. And at this point, any plan that we have, we are not going to be able to get those reservoirs back to where they were, and any, any idea that we can I think is going to, you know, basically set us up for failure. So I do know that there are lots of lots of people working on this and, you know, it's, it's not going to be solved overnight, but it is something that they are well aware of and I think that there is a solution as long as we plan the Colorado River system, based on the climate that we are in now, and the climate that we will be in in 20 years not the climate that we were in. And for listeners who are interested in this we've done a number of stories in the past year or two about the Colorado River drought climate change and why the states that all draw water from it need to renegotiate realistic shares so if you search on our website just search Colorado River and those stories will come up. This could be for anybody more likely twilight or Becky I'm thinking, much of the discussion here has been about issues associated with human impacts. Does anyone want to comment on the types and magnitude and importance of impacts on non human populations that we're seeing happen now and realize that you know wildlife is not really anybody's focus here but you know feel free if you want to say something about that. One quick thing I will say is that I think that the next assessment that comes out from working group to is going to be a really wonderful assessment that is going to detail these human impacts but there will also be wildlife impacts as well. And I think that is something that hopefully we, we can address in our planning in our local communities. Well, I don't know a lot of the risk. I do know that particularly when we talk about the Colorado River or warming in the West that water quality. Definitely becomes an issue for wildlife within the rivers because those warmer temperatures have been going into the rivers and that's detrimental for for the fish like there. And drought has obviously had a significant impact on the availability of food and water, not just for wildlife, but for livestock. And so that is something that I think there's particularly for livestock there's there's a lot of management planning, best management practices for mitigating the impacts of that during drought that that there's a lot of conversations going on there but I would definitely look to how this working to our working group to report will go into the rivers, and it won't just be on the human impacts they will also talk about ecosystem impacts to our forests, and our vegetation, and they'll also go into some of those animal wildlife components and, and hopefully they'll have some solutions that they talk about there as well. Got it. Twila comments on non human impacts in the Arctic. Yes, widespread. I would point people as they wait for this next working group to report they might look back to the working group to report from the previous IPCC assessment. And that has some really nice figures that talk about increased risk for different ecosystem and different animal types because, of course it makes a big difference if you are an animal that is able to more easily move around perhaps you live in a place that has some higher elevations that you might move to to preserve a temperature range that you as an animal work well in, or you might be better at migrating and be able to move to higher latitudes. So vegetation, similarly as some vegetation is better at taking hold in new places, other vegetation, not as much. And all of these, we can't really pull apart, you know, humans and plants and animals, we're all connected and so those things are connected into, you know, what we depend on as far as food agriculture wise or farming wise animals on the ranching side of things, what people are able to to grow and depend on in different places and there's no question that there's a difference across this system. Some of them, we're seeing very severely already for example coral reef ecosystems, which have really high risks already versus some which may be a little less vulnerable so this is again an area where specific location region is really important to what is happening to individual species and and also the other species they depend on what's happening to their food sources, what's happening in the different predator prey populations. I also wanted to add that that you know what twilight brought up that the the vegetation system ecosystem and the wildlife system. If they can move in a changing climate they will and that could be good for them but that could add additional impacts that we also need to prepare for like for example, we know that pine bark beetles have have moved based on a changing climate and that's had major implications for our forests in the Rocky Mountains, and you know that changes the ecosystem there and makes it both more vulnerable to things like wildfires so these animals that are adapting to the changing climate are also changing the climate where they go, and it's going to be the same thing with vegetation you know you've got invasive species of animals and and vegetation that. If they can move they will that's going to have even new implications for where they move to, not just where they last. Right, exactly yeah. We are close to the end of our time and I want to sneak in a question. I've used my my my host position here which is, you know, all three of you spend at least large chunks of your time on campuses and I would really like to know how you see college students today who are going to live in this climate altered world reacting to climate change what are they interested in what do they care about what are they asking you about back you want to go first. I will say that I do feel that because there's a lot of depression, I think that goes around with it the whole doom and gloom and you know we talk about a lot of things that are happening in it. And you know this horrible thing is happening this horrible thing is happening these more horrible things are going to happen, and it can be overwhelming and and depressing. And so I think that there's a big mental health component that has come out not just with climate change but with a lot of topics that are becoming increasingly addressed with which is great. But I also think that we're moving away from the prove to me that the climate is going to change our college generation, they know they know the climate is changing, they're basically accepting that they want the solutions and so I think coming out with assessment and so that discuss, you know, adaptation and mitigation and the solutions are what they're looking for because that takes that was the control back in their hands and it's not just. I'm going to be depressed about these things that are happening to me it's going to be. What can I do about that. Thanks yeah we have just about a minute left here but Shannon and twilight how about you. I'll say on my campus which is a is one of the more conservative campuses in the country that I would agree with Becky that the students are very much aware of climate change they accept that it is reality. There, they are, they are experiencing mental health issues and also the mother of an 17 year old and a 20 year old so I see this in my own children, but they're also, they're active, they're becoming more active which to me is gives me a hope, because I think they recognize that it, unfortunately is in their hands if the climate is going to, if we're going to make any positive impacts on the change and if we're going to adapt to it successfully. And so I see a lot more activism a lot more interested interest in equity and justice issues related to the climate change which, to me is is is very affirming. And I really agree, I think that there's just a great awareness with young people today and a real desire for action to happen and actually also, I think a real push for the people in power now to take action, because that really we can't wait until today's 20 some things are the people leading our governments and our businesses so I think they're putting pressure on and all the ways that they can think and I think that this is really helping them to stay resilient because I know I often say you have the way to not get stuck in the climate blues is to take action is to talk with other people about it is to find ways to connect with your community, your school, other people in finding ways to become resilient to make yourselves in your community more resilient and and work both on the adaptation and mitigation side and I think young people are those those who are most resilient are finding that really to be true and and finding that this collaboration and work together is a big part of staying a mentally healthy and also doing our best job to minimize the harmful impacts of the future. Super thank you all for that. Yeah, and I just want to jump in that fairly the editor general manager the conversation again what a fabulous hour I mean I wish we had another hour, and I apologize that we could not get to all audience questions but we will look at them and perhaps there's stories in there that we could, we could do. Twyla Becky Shannon Jenny. Thank you. It's been an illuminating hour. And thank you to the audience for such thoughtful questions and being with us today. So we're going to be signing off now. Thank you.