Session Lead: Piero Mazzini (VIMS)

Co-Lead(s): Cassia Pianca (VIMS), Don Boesch (UMCES)

Session Format: Oral presentations

Session Description:

The IPCC Sixth Assessment documents not only pervasive, human-caused warming and sea-level rise, but also concomitant increases in the frequency and severity of short-lived, extreme events to a greater extent than had been anticipated. These events include heat waves on land and in the ocean, heavy rainfall, intense hurricanes, and both high-tide and storm surge inundation.  How will these extreme events in conjunction with the longer-term climatic changes projected by the IPCC affect the Chesapeake ecosystem, water quality, fisheries, adjacent lands, dependent economies and the regional society?  To what degree can deleterious effects later in the century be avoided by achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years as called for under the Paris Agreement?  What steps can be taken to adapt to the unavoidable risks?  This session invites presentations that address such questions in the context of the Chesapeake region. It welcomes presentations from all natural and social science disciplines and employing a variety of approaches, including theoretical, observational, modeling and practical applications.

Presenters:

Piero Mazzini & Cassia Pianca – Marine Heatwaves in the Chesapeake Bay

Nathan Shunk – Impact of Marine Heatwaves on Subsurface Hydrography and Dissolved Oxygen in the Chesapeake Bay

Amita Mehta – Assessing Impact of Extreme Rain Events on the Chesapeake Bay Water Quality Using Remote Sensing

Colin Hawes – The direct effect of warming dominates future increases in Chesapeake Bay hypoxia☐ Kyle Hinson – Watershed Climate Scenario Uncertainty and Implications for Chesapeake Bay Hypoxia

Andrew Ross – Anthropogenic influences on the extreme river discharge of 2018-2019

Zach Easton – A Systematic Review of Chesapeake Bay Climate Change Impacts and Uncertainty: Watershed Processes, Pollutant Delivery, and BMP Performance

Jeremy Hanson – Climate Change Impacts and BMP Performance: A Systematic Review and Framework for Chesapeake Bay

Samuel Caldwell – Understanding Climate Change on Interconnected Systems: A Case Study from Colonial National Historic Park

Donald Boesch – Sea-level rise projections demystified