Adaptation and Climate Change

The recent snow in Wellington – along with a class discussion on adaptation to climate change – got me thinking about an element of adapting climate change that I think is often overlooked.  That is the fact that, when assessing the ability of an area to adapt to climate change you must look at both the variability in the amount of temperature change that the region is likely to have,  so plus/minus however many degrees, relative to the normal annual variability in the region. 

For example, New Zealand is expected to have temperature change somewhere around +/- 2 degrees.  This is much different in terms of adaptation than a change of +/- 2 degrees in Boston.  The reason is pretty simple.  In Wellington annual temperatures typically range between roughly 35 and 75 degrees.  Even that might be a bit generous, generally if it’s below 40 degrees it’s exceptionally cold and it doesn’t often get much about 70.  A change of +/- 2 degrees represents 12% of the annual temperature change.  Compare this to Boston where temperatures range from well below zero to the high 90s or 100.  In that context +/- 2 degrees represents less than 2% of the annual change. 

The implications are that areas like Boston, with wide normal ranges are much more able to adapt to climate change than somewhere like Wellington.  In Boston people are accustomed to heating their homes in the winter and cooling them in the summer.  Conversely, in Wellington, homes are not designed to be heated in extremely cold (read: below 35 degree) weather.  So if weeks like this past one are going to become more common here it will require a significant investment in insulation and retrofitting a lot of long-term infrastructure.  Whereas if the average winter temperature in Boston drops from (I’m estimating here) 20 degrees to 18 degrees people will be a bit less comfortable and they’re going to spend a bit more on heating costs but they’re not going to have to put in new insulation, new windows and new heat pumps. 

I haven’t read much about this so I can’t point to other people’s thinking on it and it isn’t an earth-shattering revelation.  But it is one more minor aspect of climate change that will have to be dealt with going forward.