Key Facts Of The Day 2/1

Storms and Flooding

• Climate change will cause the nation’s flooding losses to jump more than 26% over the next three decades from $32.1 billion to $40.6 billion, with disadvantaged communities shouldering an outsize share of the economic burden.

  • The forecast assumes nations will reduce planet-warming emissions roughly in line with the targets agreed upon at the recent COP26 climate summit. If those targets aren’t met, the costs could be even greater.

  • The most-pronounced flood risk now rests with impoverished White communities, but Black communities will see their flooding costs increase twice as quickly moving forward, largely for geographic reasons.

  • The southeastern U.S., which is home to large Black populations, is expected to experience more hurricanes as temperatures continue to rise.

  • Flooding costs are expected to increase 49% in Jackson, Mississippi and 24% in far-inland Montgomery, Alabama.

  • The sharpest cost increases are projected to occur in the Southeast, along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Flood damages are expected to spike 372% in Cameron County, Texas. In Miami-Dade County, Florida the forecast is 50.9%. Several southern Louisiana counties could see tenfold jumps.

  • The forecast also points to possible hot spots far inland, in mountainous areas like Teton County, Wyoming with a 20.5% and Grant County, Washington with a 23.8% increase in flood costs. Albemarle County, Virginia, home to Charlottesville, is expected to see its flooding costs increase by about a third.

  • Flood costs will grow even if governments around the globe are able to dramatically decarbonize the environment starting immediately.

• 90 million Americans across 19 states are in the path of the next winter storm to streak across the U.S.

  • The storm could also impact businesses and consumers as weather conditions may slow down or even stop a few trucks from transporting goods through parts of the Central U.S. for a few days this week.

  • Denver, Colorado, Dallas, Texas, and Detroit, Michigan are among the major metro areas expected to face wintry consequences and potential travel trouble.

  • Major highway arteries across the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley southwestward into Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Texas may also be impacted.

  • An expansive area of snow and ice, extending along a 2,000-mile-long swath of the country, is expected as early as Tuesday night from portions of Colorado and New Mexico to Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.

  • By Wednesday night, the wintry hazards are forecast to expand farther south and east into Texas, Arkansas, and part of the lower Ohio Valley.

  • As the storm shifts toward the Eastern Seaboard late in the week, weather will directly affect travel in some parts of the Northeast.

• Climate change may be supercharging Northeast snowstorms.

  • The weekend blizzard that hit coastal Mid-Atlantic and New England with up to 30.9 inches of snow and howling winds is consistent with climate science research showing how the characteristics of these winter storms are changing.

  • Many of the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast’s biggest snowstorms on record have occurred since 2000, in line with climate change-related trends toward more frequent and severe heavy precipitation events.

Wildfires

• As of Friday, there are currently 2 large active wildfires that have burned 926 acres across CA and FL. As of Friday, 1,302 wildfires have burned 25,691 acres across the country.

• As of Tuesday, the Colorado Fire in California has burned 687 acres and is 98% contained.

• January 2022 will go down as one of the region’s driest Januarys on record. Just a few weeks without rainfall was enough to dry out the ground, warm up the air and increase the risk for wildfires.

  • While the majority of California’s wildfires occur during the summer months, the risk for more wildfires starting year-round is increasing because climate change is leading to warmer, drier and even windier conditions throughout the year.

• The Sand Springs, Oklahoma area faces unique wildfire risk.

  • In 2020, the Sand Springs Fire Department responded to 155 fire calls, a third of which were grass or brush fires.

  • Sand Springs is part of a wildland-urban interface, a transitional area between wilderness and land developed by human activity, which is at a greater risk of catastrophic wildfire.

• Currently 32 counties in Oklahoma are under a burn ban, and nearly the entire western half of the state is experiencing extreme drought.

Extreme Heat

• In July 2021 over 150 community volunteers in Raleigh and Durham County, North Carolina spent a day collecting data for the Urban Heat Island Temperature Mapping Campaign.

  • On Feb. 3 at 6.p.m, project partners will host the Raleigh/Durham HeatWatch UHI Data Release, a public webinar to introduce these maps to the community and discuss efforts to mitigate heat islands.

• Researchers say temperature by itself isn’t the best way to measure climate change; measurements should also include humidity.

  • Factoring in air moisture along with heat shows that climate change since 1980 is nearly twice as bad as previously calculated.

  • The energy generated in extreme weather, such as storms, floods and rainfall is related to the amount of water in the air.

  • Water vapor is a potent heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere that increases climate change.

  • From 1980 to 2019, the world warmed about 1.42 degrees, but taking energy from humidity into account, the world has warmed and moistened 2.66 degrees.

  • In the tropics, the warming was as much as 7.2 degrees.

  • The high humidity in the tropics increases storm activity, from regular storms to tropical cyclones and monsoons.

New Reports And Data

• A January 2022 study found that offshore wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico could create 17,500 jobs.

• A January 2022 study found that U.S. flooding losses will spike 26% by 2050 due to climate change.

• A January 2022 study found that the combination of surface air temperature and humidity is a more comprehensive metric not only for global warming but also for its impact on climate and weather extremes.