Yale Alumni Academy and the Yale School of the Environment have assembled a distinguished roster of expert faculty to address the leading climate change issues facing our wondrous planet. Please join us as we discuss Drought, Flooding, and Adaptation in the Age of Climate Change with Dr. Shimon Anisfeld. What happens when a society built around a certain level of water availability finds itself facing a climate-change-induced megadrought? What happens when stormwater infrastructure designed to handle the 100-year storm is faced with sea-level rise and more intense flood events? This talk will discuss the ways that climate change is affecting the hydrologic cycle, and the ways that planners and water managers are adapting to those changes. Two themes will be central to our conversation:
Variability: Floods and droughts (sometimes in close succession) are manifestations of the inherent variability of the hydrologic cycle, a variability that is being amplified by climate change. Our tools for understanding variability are rooted in using the past as a guide to the future; what do we do when we expect the future to be different from the past?
Resilience: The damage done by a flood or drought is a function not just of the physical event, but also of where and how we live and work. Climate change is uncovering long-standing vulnerabilities in our water-management systems – indeed, in our patterns of development; can we adapt in ways that increase our resilience both to climate change and to other stressors?
To register for more events during the Yale Alumni Academy Climate Change Conversation series please visit our website.
