Focus on Florida: Climate

 

ClimateNewsFlorida is here to tell the story of climate, climate change, and climate change impacts.

Our environment is crucial to our communities and our future and realities of life in the Sunshine State are changing day-to-day, year-to-year.

Florida’s geo-realities are all around us. Let’s start by consider some basics:

• Florida’s topography is a geological fact — we’re near sea-level and we are susceptible to sea-level rise unlike any other state in the U.S.
• We are uniquely exposed to extreme weather — we’ve a record of hurricanes with disastrous winds and surges off the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coast.
• Our peninsula is an ancient sea-bed that has risen over geologic time — we are composed  largely of limestone called Karst in geology. Our peninsula is extremely porous as a result. We have one of the most beautiful yet vulnerable locations in the world, full of clear blue- and turquoise-water springs under which are thousands of miles of underground caves, waterways, and flowing aquifers. Rising sea-level? Salt-water intrusion and water quality issues come with the tides …

 

Welcome to Florida. Welcome to the Sunshine State.

We are unique — and we are connected to larger forces of nature.

Florida … the front line of climate change and climate change challenges