91原创

If temperatures continue to rise, by the end of the century, Delaware鈥檚 climate could resemble that currently experienced in the Carolinas. Today, the impacts of climate change can already be seen and felt in rising sea levels, dangerous heat waves and heavy precipitation. 

This is evident in communities like Lewes and Reedy Point, where flooding can occur in low-lying roadways even on sunny days. In Lewes, minor tidal flooding occurred on average about six days per year in the 1980s. Today, it's closer to 41 days per year, a dramatic increase over roughly 40 years. With sea level rise accelerating in the region, this frequency is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades.  

To help understand how climate change might impact Delaware in the future, the 91原创鈥檚 (CEMA) completed a comprehensive assessment of different climate change scenarios for Delaware in the report. 

Those future projections are classified into scenarios ranging from intermediate to extreme levels of climate change. The report is broken up into sections and looks specifically at temperature, sea-level rise and precipitation. 

Kevin Brinson, director of CEMA and Delaware State Climatologist, said the sea-level projections were particularly eye-opening. 

鈥淓ssentially, over the next, say, 30 years, we'll see about the same amount of sea level rise as we saw over the last 100,鈥� Brinson said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 obviously a big problem for a state like Delaware. With an accelerating sea level rise rate, the issues that we're running into and that we are already beginning to see are going to increase significantly.鈥� 

Tina Callahan, associate director of CEMA and assistant Delaware state climatologist, said that winter precipitation showed a statistically significant increase. 

鈥淧recipitation projections show an increase in annual precipitation by mid-century, with the winter season showing the strongest upward trend,鈥� she said. 

Regarding the temperature increase, Brinson said it鈥檚 important for people to truly grasp what it could mean. 

鈥淚t could be a very different temperature than what we experience today,鈥� Brinson said. 鈥淭hat doesn't mean we're not going to get cold weather anymore, and it doesn鈥檛 mean that we're not going to have snow. But it means that, on the average, by the end of the century, our annual temperature patterns will look a lot more like the southeastern coast of the United States than what it looks like today.鈥� 

To generate the projections, Callahan said the researchers reviewed several climate models adjusted for Delaware and used the latest international and national climate reports to assess the state鈥檚 future climate.

The researchers also examined historical data to assess how the model data matched their observed records and to quantify the degree of alignment. 

鈥淲e wanted to validate the data,鈥� Callahan said. 鈥淭hen we took that result and looked at the future projections.鈥� 

The authors of the report were Callahan and Brinson, as well as John A. Callahan, Daniel Leathers, Matt Shatley, Chris Hughes and Emmanuel Olamiriki. 

Funding for the study was provided by the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) Division of Climate, Coastal and Energy. Delaware Technical Advisors provided advisory support, and the scenarios from this report will be used to support the state's Climate Action Plan and future decision-making throughout the state.