The Real Climate Change

by

The story below is from our January/February 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you! 

We have heard about it, been occasionally alarmed by it, seen its fury, but do we really know what the climate is going to do in our own backyard over time?

The website bestplaces.net gives us this generous assessment of our climate:

“Roanoke has a humid subtropical climate with hot summers and mild winters. The average temperature in the summer months ranges from 70 to 85 degrees. Winter temperatures average around 40, while spring and fall are generally mild with temperatures between 45 and 65. Rainfall is abundant throughout the year, but it is most plentiful during the summer months when thunderstorms are common. Snowfall is sporadic but can be heavy at times in the winter months.”

Sounds pretty good, huh? But can it last? Well. Probably not.

Ask Virginia Tech’s Dr. Theo Lim of the Global Change Center and he will reply, “The statistic I like, according to global climate change models is the 50-year change under various scenarios. For example, if we don’t mitigate, worst case scenario is that Roanoke will be more like Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 50 years.” Stop for a minute and consider what that means.

Says Lim: “The average July high in Tuscaloosa in 2023 was 91 degrees. Roanoke’s average July high was 86 degrees. It is already changing. The amount of heat advisory days will triple (to over 90). In Roanoke, a lot of people haven’t had to use air conditioning often. There are more old buildings, homes are not as weatherized, people don’t have central AC. The poorest, most marginalized people are at more risk for heat illness, higher energy bills. [Increased temperatures will] hit the most vulnerable the hardest.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tells us clearly that “the urban heat island effect is a real and serious problem … in Roanoke and will continue to worsen with the effects of climate change.”

Lim is studying the urban heat island (UHI) effect, one that will affect different cities differently. Roanoke is definitely getting warmer (second warmest July on record in 2023; first was 2012) and 90-degree days are no longer outliers. The July 2023 average high in Tuscaloosa was 91.

In urban heat islands, cities are hotter than surrounding rural areas, four to seven degrees hotter on average. In Roanoke, within the city, there’s a 10- to 15-degree variant. With less development and more tree canopy and vegetation, it’s 10 degrees cooler than a train track, the airport, I-581 and Williamson Road. They hold a lot more heat and are called intraurban heat islands.

Southwest Virginia native and Lim’s Tech colleague Dr. Craig Ramseyer says, “I was just at a meeting of 127 institutions around the world [discussing] better communicating of our science to the public. A big part is thinking about local weather. For [this region], it gets lost, the economic impact and the changes to the way life works here. It’s going to change. The most obvious place to start is temperature. One of the reasons I moved to Blacksburg is that at high elevations we are protected somewhat. Ninety-degree days 50 years from now will be commonplace. Roanoke already sees them. We will continue to see shifts of the goal posts. The hottest days in summer [will increase] 4-5-6 degrees.”

Lim notes that Roanoke is “trying to incorporate its Climate Action Plan into the city plan, giving more teeth to how we think about development.”

Leigh Anne Weitzenfeld, Roanoke’s Sustainability Outreach Coordinator, has put together that Action Plan and says currently the Climate Action Plan is in the process of aligning it with the City Plan 2040. It was written in order to easily be understood with less text and more graphics, she says. “It is a functional plan,” one that is “clearly understood. It could have been heavy on jargon and the scientific language.” The plan looks at “how climate change will affect your family.”

Ultimately, the Climate Action Plan outlines how “we have the opportunity to fix this,” says Weitzenfeld. “It is already in progress. We took 13 years to replace the horse and buggy with the car. [This new change] will have a ripple effect throughout society.

“Climate change will affect systems, and society is systems. COVID closed everything and led to changes in our systems. We are looking at major disruptions in energy systems, transportation and agriculture… a major world shift in 10 to 15 years.” Huge disruptions are ahead, she says, and “we need to start adjusting. If we don’t embrace this, it could get worse.”

Weitzenfeld believes a huge priority at this moment is to de-carbonize the way we live. Roanoke, for example, has a goal of reducing carbon emissions 50 percent by 2030. That would combine with “creating personal plans to decarbonize,” to go with renewable energy and to use technology already available to affect the climate in a positive way. “It is possible,” she says, without hesitation. Ideally, she anticipates bringing “together the largest employers, assessing our starting point” and “seeing how we can effect change together.”

“We need to understand how [change] will affect families, especially moms and the children,” Weitzenfeld says. “We will have climate mitigation here in the United States, but are cities ready for it? Are we planning properly? Any new building will be still in use at the turn of the century. Are they being planned with renewable energy and reduced emissions? The challenge is how.”

Kevin Myatt, who has become the region’s weather guru through his weather column in Roanoke’s daily newspaper for more than 20 years and now for Cardinal News, believes the “biggest change will be that summer nights are a lot warmer.” He sees humidity being a temperature driver because the effect of warmer oceans “will move inland.”

We are already seeing examples of severe weather, giant storms like the four inches of rain that fell this past fall in two hours during the Virginia Tech-Perdue football game in Blacksburg. “It was the third highest total rainfall ever. The second was two years ago,” says Myatt.

High humidity tends to stick the temperatures in the 90s, he says. “This year, we talked about the hottest summer, but weather patterns kept us out of it. We had an extended spring because of the heat dome west of us. It moved around and brought cooler air in from Canada.”

There is, frankly, “no slowing or stopping the warming,” says Myatt, but on the other hand, “winter is always erratic here. Mild winters with light snow are frequent.”

Looking ahead 50 years, he says, “A lot can happen. The carbon output determines where we will be. It’s a long time to be predicting. But any climatologist will say there’s no reason to think it will not be warmer. Winter will still be here, but it will be shorter and warmer. The South is coming North.”

Says Ramseyer, “Some people are dismissive of climate change, and it comes down to anxiety about what this means for the future, them personally. How will I have to change my life? Some changes may be more nuanced than they assume. Need to see proof that it won’t change how daily life works. I hope we realize that it is not as disruptive as anticipated.”

“We won’t be a place that is not affected” by climate change, says Weitzenfeld. 

Talking About the Weather 

Bob Schmucker, Optical Cable and songwriter: “I moved from Chicago to Roanoke for several reasons, but being tired of Chicago winters was definitely on the list. When I left Chicago for an interview with FiberCom, Chicago was getting ready for a blizzard. When I got to Roanoke, it was 70-plus degrees, and everything was green and blooming. When I returned to Chicago, my car was buried under a foot of snow.”

Amy Rebecca Shea, educator: “We had a warm spring and late cold snap. Lots of lilacs are blooming now too. I have an apple tree in bloom (in October) on my road. Not what we would think of as normal at all.”

Crickett Nordhaus, retired: “I moved from the Roanoke Valley to Fancy Gap at 2,900 feet a year ago because it’s always 10 degrees colder than the valley, and less chance of flooding. (Nordhaus also lived on a boat with her husband for a time.)

Chris Martin, Realtor: Clients moving to Roanoke “not necessarily because of the heat. One currently is leaving the beach because she’s tired of her house flooding during hurricanes.”

Katy Cookston, Realtor: “Most clients we’ve helped are moving here to get four seasons, and escape naturally occurring weather storms like earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes. It’s not normally to escape heat.”

Radford University Professor Bill Kovarik wants to know: “Climate refugees are coming eventually. What is this region doing to plan for them?”

The Urban Heat Island Effect

From the 2023 Roanoke Climate Action Plan:

Climate change will increase the frequency and duration of high temperatures. Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related illnesses in the U.S. and causes more deaths and health problems than all other natural disasters combined. Heat waves don’t have to shatter temperature records to be dangerous. The period of time the heat wave lasts is equally as important as how hot it gets.

Our built environment will worsen the effects of climate change in urban and suburban areas because these areas are already hotter due to urban heat island (UHI) effect. Urban heat islands are developed areas that are hotter than the surrounding areas.

The size, features, layout and building materials that develop our cities typically include dark asphalt roads, parking lots and even dark rooftops. These all absorb the sun’s heat during the day and release it at night. There is also a lack of vegetation and tree canopy that cool areas via water vapor, shade and albedo, or reflecting sunlight.

Waste heat generated from buildings and vehicles contribute to UHI, too. Additionally, UHI causes an increase in energy use, which in turn, increases energy costs, ozone and other air pollution from additional electricity generation and emissions. (Get a look at the report found at roanokeva.gov under “City of Roanoke Climate Action Plan 2023.”)

The story above is from our January/February 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!