How sea level rise contributes to billions in extra damage during hurricanes – Yale Climate Connections
Sea levels have risen by about a foot along the coast of southwest Florida. That made Hurricane Ian’s storm surge even more dangerous.
When Hurricane Ian barreled into the coast of southwest Florida on Sept. 28, the mighty hurricane’s 150-mph winds drove a massive and destructive storm surge inland. A preliminary estimate from NOAA puts Ian’s damage at more than $50 billion, and damage estimates from some private insurers approach or exceed $100 billion. It’s likely that tens of billions of this damage was caused by a catastrophic storm surge of 10 – 15 feet, which leveled countless structures on the low-lying barrier islands just south of where Ian’s eye came ashore.
Had Ian hit a century ago, when sea levels were about a foot lower, the storm probably would have caused billions less in storm surge damage, judging by the results from two studies looking at storm surge damage from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy in New York. Taken together, the study results suggest that rising seas left a huge portion of U.S. coastal infrastructure – much of it built during the 20th century – vulnerable to storm surges.
Small increases in storm surge can cause huge impacts
A small amount of sea level rise – even just a few inches – can lead to significant damage during a storm surge event. Why?
To use a sports analogy, it’s because the interaction of a storm surge with a city is a game of inches and thresholds. Coastal cities are generally designed so that it takes a 1-in-100-year event (one that has a 1% chance of occurring in a given year) to cause substantial damaging flooding: A storm surge must rise to the base height of the city before it can flood large areas. But once the storm does cross that threshold, every inch of additional rise in water levels can flood large areas. And since just one inch of water in a 2,500-square-foot home can cause $27,000 in damage, and 12 inches can cause $72,000 in damage (according to FEMA), a few extra inches of storm surge can add up to a lot of damage in a hurry…
Extreme weather becoming a factor in where Americans choose to live – Fox Weather
A report shows that over 60% of Americans that are planning to move in the next year are reluctant to move to areas with natural disaster-prone areas or areas that experience extreme weather and sea level rise.
“All of these costs associated with climate change are actually becoming a real drag on not only our economy but particular areas that are, let’s say, high-risk areas,” Jesse Keenan, professor of sustainable real estate at Tulane University told FOX Weather.
An Alaskan Town Is Losing Ground—and a Way of Life – the New York Times
For years, Kivalina has been cited—like the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, or the island nation of Tuvalu, in the Pacific—as an example of the existential threat posed to low-lying islands by climate change…
On a visit to the state in 2015, President Barack Obama flew over Kivalina and posted a photograph of the island on social media from the air. “There aren’t many other places in America that have to deal with questions of relocation right now,” Obama wrote, “but there will be.” He described what was happening in the village as “America’s wake-up call.”
Seven years later, Kivalina’s move is still mostly in the future, even though the island continues to lose ground…
Can Development Laws Elevate Us Out of Sea Level Rise?
Watch Hill is an old neighborhood, where houses with names like Windridge, Waveland and Sea Swept began to take their positions on the ridge more than 160 years ago…
But Watch Hill’s most implacable foe has always been Mother Nature. In 1938, the Great Hurricane wiped fifty houses off Napatree Point, a finger of land curling into the sound. Today, the village is under the increasingly frequent assault of water coaxed by tidal force or blown in by Nor’easters over streets and parking lots, cutting off access to Napatree and giving the old house names a sardonic twist…
A deal on loss and damage, but a blow to 1.5C – what will be Cop27’s legacy? – the Guardian
Developed countries as a bloc are still in the top five emitters, taking historical responsibility into account, but individually they are eclipsed by rapidly growing emerging economies, such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other petrostates, according to Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser…
“This Cop was something of a failure, because it completely let the world’s biggest emitter, China, off the hook,” he said. “Global emissions can’t fall until China’s emissions fall. This is the key to climate protection.”
How to Pay for Climate Justice When Polluters Have All the Money – the New Yorker
You can imagine the tension—the anger—that comes from watching your part of the world dry up or flood, knowing that the countries whose pollution caused your problems also have enough dollars to repair the damage…COP27 is one more reminder, however, that justice only proceeds, fitfully, through politics. Rebalancing the world’s wealth, even a little, is the trickiest of political tasks. Yet our chances for a livable world may depend on it.
Voters pass historic climate initiatives in ‘silent surprise’ of US midterms – Guardian
The electoral support at the state and local levels for more climate action comes as world leaders meet at Cop27…“Climate voters were the silent surprise of election night,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, the founder of the Environmental Voter Project. “We weren’t loud, and nobody saw us coming, but we showed up to vote in huge numbers.”
Report Released at COP27 Gives a ‘Terminal Diagnosis’ for Summer Sea Ice – Columbia Climate School
On November 7, the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative released its annual State of the Cryosphere Report (which) presents troubling news of present and projected impacts on the world’s ice…but offers hope that future harms can be limited by rapid and sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions…
On the way to climate hell: Will COP27 negotiations enforce climate action commitments? – Forbes India
The debate of economic growth versus environment is central to our times and at the heart of the climate negotiations of COP27. Escalating climate events worldwide show that we are living on borrowed time.