Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Our planet lived in a kind of temperature equilibrium for thousands of years. But more recently, warmer temperatures have disturbed that balance, ratcheting up extremes of rain and drought, fire and flood. The ability to mark small changes unfolding over time is often lost in the harried, frenzied now. Yet the disruptions of climate change are everywhere–the famously warming arctic but also in familiar places and backyards. With precise measurements and scientific modeling, climate experts can bring global forecasts down to community impacts. Such downscaling looks at planetary information in particular places with high resolution. This paper will talk about a different kind of mapping. Using techniques of creative nonfiction, I will zoom in on large-scale processes happening at the local level, offering vivid, personalized depictions happening both on the ground and beneath the surface. I will highlight changes in Norfolk and Tangier Island, Virginia; the Alligator Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Banks, North Carolina; and also the Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, where residents have been called the first climate change refugees (as they have on Tangier). What changes are happening in the places we live or spend time in? How do we know they are happening (what baseline can be used)? What are the foreseeable consequences or actions? Adaptation strategies? What are the best ways to communicate those changes, as a dire warning or something more hopeful?