San Antonio could sweat through up to four solid months per year of 100-degree-plus days by the end of this century if humanity does not act to slow the rate of global warming.
That’s according to climate modeling by University of Texas at San Antonio professor Hatim Sharif. Even in a possible future where greenhouse gas emissions decrease by the year 2100, the models on average project 55 days per year with temperatures over 100 degrees.
That’s compared to an average of seven triple-digit days per year from 1971 through 2000, used as a baseline in Sharif’s report, which relied on averages from multiple different climate models.
“It’s going to be significantly hotter,” Sharif told the Rivard Report. “All models agree, and it seems for some scenarios, these increases will be significant.”
Sharif’s report is part of San Antonio’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, a partnership among the City, CPS Energy, Navigant, and UTSA. His findings are consistent with a previous climate modeling report for San Antonio by Texas Tech University professor Katharine Hayhoe.
Studies like these can never predict the future with absolute certainty, but they are useful guides for what to expect as the 21st century unfolds, said Doug Melnick, the City’s chief sustainability officer.
“There’s really nothing shocking about it,” Melnick said. “It’s going to get hotter, it’s going to get drier, and when we do get precipitation, it’s going to get more extreme.”
The report comes at a time of record-breaking heat around the world, including in Texas. Last Monday as a high temperature hit 105 degrees, the need for air conditioning pushed San Antonio’s electricity demand to an all-time high.
“The projections are showing that that’s going to be more common and a regular occurrence,” Melnick said. “What conversations do we need to have over something as simple as affordability for residents that have challenges paying their utility bills?”
Globally, average temperatures increased 2 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century, according to NASA. An overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that this rapid rate of warming is due to greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
Reliable temperature data for San Antonio date back to around the 1880s. Since then, the city’s average temperatures have climbed 2.4 degrees, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.
The city has also seen a steady increase in the number of hot days per year, a trend that will likely continue over the next century.
Under a worst-case scenario, the climate models Sharif used predict that San Antonio will have between 75 and more than 125 days per year – two-and-a-half to four whole months– above 100 degrees by the 2071-to-2100 time period.
Also in a worst-case scenario, the city could have roughly eight days per year on average of 110 degrees or more by the end of this century. San Antonio’s highest-ever recorded temperature was 111 degrees on Sept. 5, 2000.
To arrive at these projections, Sharif used the outputs of 21 different global climate models, which run climate simulations on a worldwide scale.
“They all focus on different things,” Sharif said. “To reduce the uncertainty, you have to run all of them and then average the models.”
He then took these outputs through a standardized “downscaling” process to make predictions at a local level.
The outputs are based on two possible futures – one where greenhouse gas emissions hit a peak and then decline towards the end of the century, and another business-as-usual scenario where fossil fuel dependence continues and emissions keep increasing.
The models predict San Antonio’s summers will become even hotter by several measures. Maximum temperatures, average temperatures, and the number of hot days will all increase, while the number of cool days and nighttime freezes will go down.
For rainfall, the future is less certain, though Sharif’s modeling indicates that droughts and floods could become more severe.
“One of the things about climate change is that it will maybe increase variability,” Sharif said. “We can go from extreme to extreme.”
Extremes are already the norm for Texas and especially San Antonio. The city is prone to frequent droughts but also part of a region known as Flash Flood Alley.
Under both low- and high-emission scenarios, heavy downpours are expected to get even heavier.
For example, a current 100-year storm (a storm with a 1-in-100 chance of happening each year) would drop about 10 inches of rain over 24 hours. By 2071 to 2100, it would drop between 12 and 15.2 inches.
Information like this could help local authorities plan for more severe floods. Currently, city codes require most drainage structures to handle 100-year storms, but that may not be sufficient in a future where 100-year storms are more intense than they are now.
San Antonio has already seen an increase in peak flooding along its urban streams and rivers, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. That’s also likely tied to an increase in asphalt and concrete.
Scientists frequently publish studies looking at how climate change is already affecting Texas and will continue to in the future. Recent papers have covered warmer temperatures’ influence on Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall, crop yields, the spread of dengue fever, and the effects of climate change on Texas groundwater.
It will be up to local officials and the roughly 90 volunteers serving on various climate plan committees to figure out how San Antonio can best adapt to this changing climate.
They expect to finish a draft climate plan in January, with a final version ready for City Council approval in April.
This is an editorial. Why isn’t it marked as such?
Climate change is a natural phenomena, there is no conclusive scientific evidence that it is caused by man and it is ludicrous, in my opinion, for anyone to think that mankind can alter the earth’s climate. America has led the world in minimizing pollution as we should for many reasons, health being an important one. Those who advocate taxes to address their concerns about climate change are simply seeking more funding for government control of our lives.
Palmer Moe – you are on to something! The climate of earth has changed over time and will continue to change over time – but one or two lifespans of humans is not the proper time span for measurement.
The only thing for certain that increases with all the “climate change” hype is our SAWS and CPS bills. This is food for their higher salaries and rate increases. We need competitive choices to supply our water and electricity, like other cities for example, Houston ( I wonder if Houston is AAA rated!).
Unfortunately the only funded research is the research that supports a political conclusion. So many “scientist” have been caught cooking the books to please their masters. This is why I’m in the skeptic camp and will remain so until the “Climate warriors” end their war on capitalism, free thought, free scientific research.
Houston is Aa3. I recall that in 1969 a Stanford professor (name escapes me now, but he’s still there) predicted that population growth would lead to exhaustion of resources (oil, in particular) and world-wide famine. All the lefties bought into it. Now, the world is awash in oil and the greater problem is not famine, but obesity. The professor has yet to recant his dire and foolish predictions.
It was not long after that there was the scare of an ice age.
Poor Brendan. He can opine all he wishes, but young, emotional, lacking in experience and perspective, and having been brainwashed wherever he received his education, so-called, he should not be foisted upon us as a reporter.
“Could” or “Might” instead of “Will” in the headline would certainly have been more appropriate, and given Brendan more credibility as a reporter.
I usually enjoy the Rivard Report articles, especially when they are based on logic and reason. This article is a great example of conjecture and wishful conclusions. If the reporter would actually follow the evidence cited , he might see the illogical research and methodology meant to obfuscate and mislead. The primary sources have been discredited.
Please do more reporting and less Orwellian propaganda.
Cite your own sources, Johnny.
Baby boomers who won’t be around to see this and who can afford to live in denial sure are active on the Rivard Report.
“Afford” is an interesting word to use here since the answer to “Climate Change” is ALWAYS higher taxes and control. Much like the Aztecs and Mayans cultures used solar/lunar eclipse to extort treasure and sacrifice from the masses. People still fall for the same old tricks that have been use to control people for millennia.
The controversy seems to be only through politicians and the media. Scientist and their organizations & associations overwhelmingly believe humans are contributing to Global warming. We need to vote for individuals who ask the right questions and know who is answering them. We simply don’t know but the likelihood we are contributing makes sense to me by simply asking – Where is all the carbon we are burning going? With countries like Russia, who would benefit greatly from Global warming by having more green space, livable space, trying to influence our votes, We have to look and vote to those who will make the effort via science, not those whose answers maybe end at the bible or whose votes are elsewhere.
Here’s the “Real Evidence” behind the Global Warming deception (which has transitioned to “Climate Change”). This is why we shouldn’t trust or believe what they say ever again. They have well-earned our distrust.
Do a Google search for the Forbes article:
Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate
You will find that the information I include below comes directly from that article. They got caught, then did the same thing all over again. What’s stopping them from continuing their deceptive practices.
Their e-mails tell the real truth they want hidden:
“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.
Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists “must get rid of” the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.
“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.
“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”
“Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?”
“Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!”
“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.
Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.
There’s your unfiltered Truth everyone. This is what these scientists say to each other in private behind the public’s back. Those are the facts they wanted to keep hidden from you. When they get caught lying to us they collaborate with each other behind our backs to find better ways to cover their lies and hide the truth about their real data. What’s stopping them from doing this a 3rd time when they faced Zero consequences after getting caught the first 2 times..??
The author of the 2011 Forbes piece you just cited is a paid employee of The Heartland Institute, a think tank funded by the fossil fuel industry. In the 1990s, The Heartland Institute was known for working with the tobacco industry to discredit the science that tied secondhand smoke to cancer. The author’s affiliation is clearly disclosed at the bottom of the article.
That’s s a good way to try and dismiss and discredit the source.
So if you’re going to try and discredit that story are you also telling your readers that all of those e-mails that were sent from scientists and specialists’ during Climategate 1.0 and Climategate 2.0 are all fake and those scientists never made any of those statements?
Statements which call into serious question, the results and conclusions they’ve provided to support their facts about Climate Change?
Actually, the real evidence to this article, speaking especially to “youth in sa” is a book called the BIBLE. Read Genesis chapter 8 & 9, in particular 8:22. No need to ever worry about climate change!