Product Description
The global climate is changing. The world is getting warmer. The Arctic ice is melting faster than it has in five thousand years, the oceans are warmer than they have been in one hundred thousand, there are more and bigger storms all around the world and ocean levels are rising. And everyone wants to know what this means. What would you do if the Maritimes were plunged into a mini ice age? What if the winter was eight months long and the summer was just a shadow of what we get now? What if the Gulf Stream shuts down and we were plunged into a twenty year winter? Can this really happen? These are a few of the possibilities that face us in the future. Atlantic Canada has the dubious distinction of being “the global canary” of climate change. By a strange confluence of geography and meteorology, not only will we feel the effects of climate change first and most dramatically here, but also paradoxically, we will experience a host of seemingly contradictory climate and weather effects. Global warming could actually lead to a cooling of the Maritimes, even a mini ice age spanning the North Atlantic, before the warming takes hold. When is this all going to happen and how likely is it? Why do we think that this may actually happen? Who is doing the studies and research? How accurate are the models that make the predictions? Has it happened before? There are so many questions that have to be answered. And not all of them have clearcut answers. Almost certainly the oceans will rise. If so, how much and how fast? And it is quite possible that storms could get worse and more frequent. Can we expect more Hurricane Juans and White Juans? The Maritime Book of Climate Change pulls together the facts and research and then poses the questions that will help with the answers. Richard Zurawski takes a hard look at our regional weather and then projects into the future to see what the Maritimes will look like in the coming years as the world’s climate changes. And he discusses what should be doing now. There are things that we should be doing to mitigate the changes and to prepare for the future. How we respond and how soon we respond to the coming changes will determine how easy or how difficult the transitions will be.
About the Author
Richard Zurawski is a meteorologist, documentary filmmaker, and television and radio personality who has called Halifax his home for almost two decades. He has been in the science and weather business for over 25 years. For children, he was the host, creator and producer of Wonder Why?, The Adventures of the AfterMath Crew and WiseWeatherWhys, each a syndicated 65 episode series for television. For adults, his documentaries on science and history range from technology, to the weather, to philosophy. Both his children’s series and documentaries are sold and enjoyed around the world. He plies his meteorological bent and science proclivities with Rogers Radio in the Maritime markets of Halifax, Moncton and Saint John, where he is broadcast daily on the Rogers all news network.
