Time to begin anticipating and adapting to climate change

PhysOrg: Despite the uncertainties surrounding climate change, it is time to start developing effective strategies that will keep the nation's transportation systems and other critical infrastructure running in the face of the adverse impacts that seem increasingly likely to occur.

This consensus emerged from a two-day leadership summit that brought together major stakeholders from the $1 trillion-plus freight transportation sector with climate change researchers to discuss the issue for the first time. The meeting was held in June at Vanderbilt University and was sponsored by the Vanderbilt Center for Transportation Research (VECTOR), Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment (VIEE) and the University of Memphis' Intermodal Freight Transportation Institute.

"It is increasingly clear that climate change will have potentially large impacts on the nation's highways, railroads, waterways, airports and pipelines. In all likelihood, these impacts will increase in the future, so we have to learn how to plan ahead," said George Hornberger, director of VIEE and distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering.

According to the University Center for Atmospheric Research, more than 75 percent of natural disasters are triggered directly or indirectly by weather and climate. In the U.S., more than a quarter of our gross national product (+$2 trillion) is sensitive to weather and climate events, which affect our health, safety, economy, environment, transportation systems and national security. Each year, the U.S. sustains billions of dollars in weather-related damages caused by hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, flooding, heavy snows and drought. The threats associated with extreme weather and climate change are substantial and adapting to climate change will be crucial to economic and social stability, for example by making future water, food and energy supplies reliable and sustainable. Contributing to these costs is the problem of the nation's aging infrastructure, which needs $2.2 trillion in improvements to meet today's demands, according to the 2009 National Infrastructure Report Card by the American Society of Civil Engineers….

A clear day on the Autobahn, shot by Danny Steaven, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic license