The Maine State Climatologist gave a remarkably optimistic talk on the effects of climate change on Maine in the next 100 years.
“It’s going to be different,” said George Jacobson, State Climatologist and retired professor of biology at the University of Maine, Orono. “But it’s not necessarily the end of the world for Maine.”
Jacobson outlined how Maine might be different in the future as a result of climate change, but didn’t describe those changes as distinctly positive or negative.
Maine will see a five to 10 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature and a significant increase in precipitation in the next 100 years – this winter has been a pretty good example of the winter temperatures the future might hold, Jacobson told a crowd of about 20 on March 22 at the Bremen Town Office.
The result will be milder winters and a longer, potentially more productive, growing season, Jacobson said.
The composition of Maine’s forests will change, with spruce populations declining and white pine and hardwoods, like oaks and maples increasing, he said.
Jacobson’s information is based on research done at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute, which gathers data from researchers all over the world.
His models of the geologic history of climate change are based on many factors, including ice samples from the poles and sediment from the bottoms of ponds. Those models go back hundreds of thousands of years, and show the world has experienced a regular pattern of ice ages and warming periods.
About every 100,000 years, there is an ice age, followed by a brief period of rapid warming and then a 10,000-year interglacial period. It’s been just over 10,000 years since we entered the interglacial period following the last ice age, Jacobson said.
We’ve been in a cooling phase for the last few thousand years, but rather than getting cooler (and maybe in the next few thousand years), going into the next ice age, we’re stopping that cooling and likely heading into a warming period, Jacobson said.
Carbon dioxide levels, a gas that has been shown to insulate against heat escaping, are the highest they’ve ever been, according to Jacobson’s data. Data shows that carbon dioxide levels over the last few hundred thousand years increased in correlation with the increasing human population.
Weather records only go back to about 1850, Jacobson said. Weather describes day-to-day changes, and climate describes long-term trends. The last decade, 2000-2009, was the warmest decade on record.
Models that Jacobson’s team created from these data predict there will be significant changes in Maine’s climate, but for a place that’s already so cold, the changes might not be entirely negative, he said.
In the very long range – tens of thousands of years – Jacobson thinks the world will see another ice age, “but people in the next century or two will have a lot to deal with,” he said.
While Maine may not see catastrophe with the changing climate, the real problems as a result of climate change will be felt in other places in the world, Jacobson said. Struggles in the rest of the world will certainly affect Maine, he said.
“I think humanity better deal with this, but I don’t know what the solution is,” he said. “Changes are coming that are now unavoidable. The earth’s climate will change, and we should be planning for these changes and ways to take advantage of opportunities and cope with problems.”
