Yahoo News has been running a series of articles on how climate change is affecting different parts of the country. This week they are focusing on our region, the Southeast. In our region, some of the biggest likely impacts of the warming temperatures are more heat waves due to warmer temperatures and higher humidity, stronger and wetter hurricanes, more droughts as well as more floods due to the amplified water cycle, agricultural crop losses and increases in fires that could affect our forests. The area that will be most impacted is the coastline due to both rising sea levels (causing inundation of land and salinization of coastal aquifers) and increases in damage from tropical storms. The area that will be least impacted is the Southern Appalachian Mountains region, which is cooler and farther from the coast, although they are still subject to impacts like increased flash flooding. I think this Yahoo News article does an excellent job of reviewing all of the factors that will affect us in the Southeast over the next few decades and recommend reading it to get an overview of what we are likely to see as temperatures get warmer.
