Climate Change: Science and Impacts in Eastern NC

What is climate change, is it real…will it affect us in eastern North Carolina? These are some of the questions that Dr. Rosana Nieto Ferreira, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science at East Carolina University will discuss and answer on Monday, March 27, 2017 during her lecture and presentation at Joslyn Hall on the campus of the Carteret Community College. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. for light refreshments and a meet and greet with the lecture and presentation following from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. This event is FREE and open to the public.

The recent rapid increase in greenhouse gases in our global atmosphere, primarily Carbon Dioxide, over the last 100 years is absorbing additional daytime radiant heat from the sun and shielding the Earth’s ability to cool itself nightly by using the cold regions of outer space. The amount of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide causing this heating and shielding effect has nearly doubled in the last century. An increase that has not happened on this scale in the last 800 thousand to 12 million years when the Earth was mostly devoid of polar ice and the coastline was much farther inland.

Professor Ferreira will explain the potential catastrophic changes this rise in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide is starting to unleash within our environment and how these changes are associated with rising sea level, dissolving corals and shellfish shells, changing rainfall and drought patterns, changing how we farm, fish, where we live and ultimately changing our coastal lives. There will be a question and answer session following the lecture.