The Brown Ocean Effect
A phenomenon called the “Brown Ocean Effect” got me to thinking about the notion of climate havens recently, and about how this idea, that of a geographic location serving as a sanctuary from the worst effects of climate change, might be one that exists in the mind, but not in reality.
If you’re not familiar with the Brown Ocean Effect, here’s a primer: Hurricanes, born as angry creatures of the ocean, typically weaken and lose energy when they make landfall, which is to say when they collide with a land surface. They continue to diminish in power as they travel further inland.
Except, that is, when the hurricane travels inland and picks up a hitchhiker named the Brown Ocean Effect. Here, the storm can strengthen in intensity by puckering up those devastating lips and sucking up moisture and warmth from land that is already waterlogged.
This is what happened to Asheville, North Carolina and the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains when Hurricane Helene helped herself to some of that brown gravy and dumped torrential rains there triggering catastrophic flooding.
Supposedly, this region was a climate haven – relatively safe from the worst effects of climate change, a full 500 miles from where the hurricane made landfall in Florida. It’s sadly ironic that this past August, Asheville was recognized on a list of the top 19 climate haven cities in the U.S.
The same claim has long been laid at the doorstep of my hometown of Boise, Idaho – an inland haven protected from the worst ravages of climate change. It’s a smoky sanctuary at best; since the Foothills Fire of 1992, we have suffered through forest fires that routinely darken the summer skies and paint our lungs with ash, our summertime lump of coal from a displeased Santa.
We also happen to be about the same distance from the Pacific Ocean in Boise as Asheville was from Helene’s landfall, and while hurricanes don’t form in this part of the Pacific – at least, not yet – it makes me wonder what other dangers we risk in our supposed climate haven city.
I’m thinking about Hurricane Milton, which traveled on the coattails of Helene, and how it gained a protean strength in a span of hours – and then decided storm surge and flooding weren’t enough as it began spitting an estimated 40 tornadoes like some angry Greek god. Unreal.
A hurricane spitting tornadoes. It reinforces for me that there’s so much we don’t know. Which on the one hand is a beautiful thing about life – the unknowing and its hopeful potential – and on the other hand, scary as hell, especially these days. Climate change certainly falls into the second category. While we know the temperature will increase and the seas will rise, I don’t believe we have fully grasped how devastating and different these new weather events will be, nor where they will strike. Because it’s an order of magnitude we just don’t know.
And if we don’t know, how can there be a geographic climate haven, if ever there was such a thing? And even if there are climate haven cities, does it really matter where we live when we must deal with the storms of our minds, increasingly darkened by a fear of climate change that for many of us seems to have taken up residency there.
How about you. Do you live in a climate haven? And if so, how do you feel about it?
Godspeed, friends.
Russ