What Global Warming Looks Like: A View from Pennsylvania

October 12, 2010 | National River Cleanup, Global Warming, Restoring Rivers

Andrew Fahlund
Former Senior Vice President, Conservation (1997-2011)

Last weekend, I was supposed to take part in a cleanup along a section of the Conestoga River near Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Learn more about cleanups). I was excited about the prospect of getting out on the river with the employees of Manheim Corporation who were generously volunteering their time to lend a hand to a local resource.  River clean-ups are an amazing gateway to both volunteerism and environmental stewardship.  Unfortunately, last weekend that environment was not ready for our volunteers.  It was raining.  A lot! 

Over the past few months, the region had received almost no rain and rivers throughout the region were at near-record lows.  Although these conditions had not yet triggered water restrictions or other emergency response actions, the communities along the Conestoga were precariously close to such decisions.  On Tuesday, all of that changed in a hurry.  Over the course of about 12 hours, the region experienced more than 5 inches of rain.  The level of the river jumped 8 feet and the local community went from a record drought to a record flood.  If you look at a graph of the river, it looks like the EKG of a heart attack victim. 

Of course, there is nothing new about either droughts or floods.  They are a natural part our weather cycles, even in Pennsylvania.  Species are adapted to handle the extremes of droughts and floods and people have built infrastructure and managed water resources to manage them.  But we have a problem.

Most species and ecosystems are already over-stressed by things like sprawl, pollution, and physical destruction of habitats, so their ability to handle droughts and floods is diminished.  People are really no better off.  While our water infrastructure was once the envy of the world, we have neglected to maintain it and most of what we’ve built is inflexible and limited.  Once those limits are exceeded, the results are often catastrophic. 

Enter global warming.

Make no mistake about it, our climate is changing.  There is a great deal of uncertainty about what to expect in any one place but the evidence is very clear that change will bring more frequent and extreme floods and droughts, often in the same place in the same year.  These more frequent and extreme events threaten our communities, our economy, and our natural heritage.

Lancaster receives an average rainfall of 4.5 inches for the month of September.  In less than 24 hours they received 5.71 inches of rain after experiencing little or no rain for 6 weeks.  This looks an awful lot like global warming.  To those critics who say that I can’t be sure that a single storm or drought was caused by global warming, I say you’re right.  But isn’t it downright terrifying that we even have to wonder?  I sure think so.  Those who suffered losses from this storm don’t care what caused it.  They just want to put their lives back together and try to avoid a similar fate in the future. 

So how do we avoid that fate?  First, we need to stop carbon pollution, the heat trapping gas that is the principle cause of global warming and will bring us more of these extremes.  Second, we can fundamentally transform our communities in ways that not only protect them from the extremes but also enhance our livability, improve our safety and health, save money, and protect the natural environment.  Learn more in American Rivers' Natural Security report.

I hope to get up to the Conestoga River and join my friends at the Manheim Corporation soon.  After all of that rain, I’m sure that plenty of trash was washed into the river, along with all sorts of other nasty things.  Sadly, that’s true for many rivers across the country.  But unless we want to resign ourselves to continuously cleaning up messes, we had better start taking steps to avoiding the unmanageable and managing the unavoidable.

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