Summary for Policy Makers

The observations we have detailed herein illustrate that climate variability from year-to-year and decade-to-decade plays a greater role in Georgia’s climate than any long-term trends. Such short-term variability will continue dominating Georgia’s climate into the future.

At the century timescale, Georgia’s climate shows no statically significant trend in statewide average annual temperature, statewide total annual precipitation, or in the frequency and/or severity of droughts. In stead, observations show that the first part of the 20th century was warmer than the latter half — an indication that “global warming” is anything but “global” and also provides strong evidence that local and regional processes are more important than global ones in determining local climate and local climate variations and changes.

The same is true for tropical cyclones impacting Georgia and the United States — there is a great degree of annual and decadal variability that can be traced long into the past, but no 20th century trends in frequency, intensity, or damage.

Global sea levels are rising at a pace that is not dissimilar to that experienced and adapted to during the 20th century.

And climate change is shown to have little, if any, detectable impacts on the overall health of Georgia’s population. Application of direct measures aimed at combating the negative impacts of heat waves and vector-borne diseases prove far and away to be the most efficient and effective methods at improving the public health.

A cessation of all of Georgia’s CO2 emissions would result in a climatically-irrelevant global temperature reduction by the year 2100 of no more than five thousandths of a degree Celsius. Results for sea-level rise are also negligible. A complete cessation of all anthropogenic emissions from Georgia will result in a global sea-level rise savings by the year 2100 of an estimated 0.08 cm, or about three hundredths of an inch. Again, this value is climatically irrelevant.