Flooded roads and subways, deformed railroad tracks and weakened bridges may be the wave of the future with continuing global warming, a new US study says.
Climate change will affect every type of transportation through rising sea levels, increased rainfall and surges from more intense storms, the US' National Research Council said in a report released Tuesday.
Complicating matters, people continue to move into coastal areas, creating the need for more roads and services in the most vulnerable regions, the report noted.
"We believe that the threats to our transportation system are real," Henry Schwartz Jr said in a briefing. He is former president and chairman of the engineering firm Sverdrup/Jacobs Civil Inc, and chairman of the committee that wrote the report.
The storm that has been a once-a-century event may become a once-in-50-years event, he said, adding, "What is the proper level to design for?"
Much of the damage will be in coastal areas, but the impact will affect all areas of the country," Schwartz said. "It's time to move from the debate about climate science to 'What are we going to do about it ... how are we going to adapt to it?"'
Luisa Paiewonsky, commissioner of the Massachusetts Highway Department said her state is beginning an inventory of low-lying infrastructure because of the danger of rising sea-levels.
Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said, "an important message of this report is to begin incorporating that into design and planning." The probable costs of such improvements were not analyzed in the report, but Schwartz said the costs would be significant. However, he added, it would be less costly to prepare in advance than to deal with a catastrophe.
The report cites five major areas of growing threat:
: More heat waves, requiring load limits at hot-weather or high-altitude airports and causing thermal expansion of bridge joints and rail track deformities.
: Rising sea levels and storm surges flooding coastal roadways, forcing evacuations, inundating airports and rail lines, flooding tunnels and eroding bridge bases.
: More rainstorms, delaying air and ground traffic; flooding tunnels and railways; and eroding road and bridge supports.
: More frequent strong hurricanes, disrupting air and shipping service, blowing debris onto roads and damaging buildings.
: Rising Arctic temperatures thawing permafrost, resulting in road, railway and airport runway subsidence and potential pipeline failures.
The US transportation system was built for local conditions based on historical weather data, but those data may no longer be reliable in the face of new weather extremes, the report warns.
The committee said proper preparation would be expensive and called on federal, state and local governments to increase consideration of climate change in transportation planning and construction.
The report notes, for example, that drier conditions are likely in the watersheds supplying the St Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes. The resulting lower water levels would reduce vessel shipping capacity, seriously impairing freight movements in the region, such as occurred during the drought of 1988.
Meanwhile, California heat waves are likely to increase wildfires that can destroy transportation infrastructure.
The outlook is not all bad, however.
The report says marine transportation could benefit from more open seas in the Arctic, creating new and shorter shipping routes and reducing transport time and costs.
The report was prepared by the Transportation Research Board and the Division on Earth and Life Studies of the US' National Research Council. The groups are part of the US' National Academy of Sciences, an independent agency chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters.
During the Japanese colonial era, remote mountain villages were almost exclusively populated by indigenous residents. Deep in the mountains of Chiayi County, however, was a settlement of Hakka families who braved the harsh living conditions and relative isolation to eke out a living processing camphor. As the industry declined, the village’s homes and offices were abandoned one by one, leaving us with a glimpse of a lifestyle that no longer exists. Even today, it takes between four and six hours to walk in to Baisyue Village (白雪村), and the village is so far up in the Chiayi mountains that it’s actually
Dec. 16 to Dec. 22 Growing up in the 1930s, Huang Lin Yu-feng (黃林玉鳳) often used the “fragrance machine” at Ximen Market (西門市場) so that she could go shopping while smelling nice. The contraption, about the size of a photo booth, sprayed perfume for a coin or two and was one of the trendy bazaar’s cutting-edge features. Known today as the Red House (西門紅樓), the market also boasted the coldest fridges, and offered delivery service late into the night during peak summer hours. The most fashionable goods from Japan, Europe and the US were found here, and it buzzed with activity
These days, CJ Chen (陳崇仁) can be found driving a taxi in and around Hualien. As a way to earn a living, it’s not his first choice. He’d rather be taking tourists to the region’s attractions, but after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the region on April 3, demand for driver-guides collapsed. In the eight months since the quake, the number of overseas tourists visiting Hualien has declined by “at least 90 percent, because most of them come for Taroko Gorge, not for the east coast or the East Longitudinal Valley,” he says. Chen estimates the drop in domestic sightseers after the
It’s a discombobulating experience, after a Lord of the Rings trilogy that was built, down to every frame and hobbit hair, for the big screen, to see something so comparatively minor, small-scaled and TV-sized as The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. The film, set 183 years before the events of The Hobbit, is a return to Middle-earth that, despite some very earnest storytelling, never supplies much of an answer as to why, exactly, it exists. Rohirrim, which sounds a little like the sound an orc might make sneezing, is perhaps best understood as a placeholder for further cinematic