Climate Network Projects

The Gulf of Maine Council’s Climate Network helped citizens and governmental leaders find the resources needed to adapt to a changing climate. Here are links to recent projects that provide adaptation guidance and opportunities for taking action:

Living Shorelines: Working with Nature to Protect Coastal Communities and Habitats.

King Tides: Envisioning Sea-Level Rise: The Climate Network helped coordinate a regional initiative to engage citizens in photographing extreme high tides, helping document how sea-level rise may affect infrastructure and ecosystems. Learn more about this initiative at http://gulfofmaine.kingtides.net.

Regional Climate Dashboard: The Climate Network helped create a dashboard of recent and real-time data, giving site visitors ready access to a wide range of temperature, precipitation and oceanic data sets.

Municipal Climate Adaptation: The Climate Network surveyed more than 30 municipal leaders around the Bay of Fundy to learn more about climate adaptation measures underway, actions planned and resources needed.

Planning for Change: A Binational Gathering in September 2013 highlighted actions needed in forestry, fisheries and transportation

• Precipitation from extreme events in the GOM region has increased 74 percent since 1958 (NOAA).
• Extreme weather already poses economic and ecological challenges, and these events are expected to grow more frequent in coming decades, with precipitation increasing 5-9 percent (IPCC 2013).

Credit: Sherry Godlewski

• By 2050, climate scientists project a more rapid increase of 2.5 to 3.5°C (4.5 to 6.3° F) in regional air temperature (IPCC 2013).
• Temperatures in the Gulf of Maine have risen much more in recent decades than many other coastal waters around the world, and a 2012 “heat wave” in sea surface temperatures had damaging economic impacts.

Projected Temperature Changes in the Gulf of Maine Region by the 2050s (°C.), reflecting the most recent IPCC models (Credit: Adam Fenech, UPEI Climate Lab)

What’s Climate Change and What’s Just the Weather?

This one-minute animation by Ole Christoffer Haga, produced by Teddy TV for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, clearly and humorously illustrates the difference between long-term climate trends and variable weather patterns.