Flooding

There’s an old joke about the fellow who has his left foot in a bucket of ice water and the right in a bucket of hot water, so that his overall temperature is average. That seemed to apply to the climate during 2022’s northern summer of extremes. Global warming is undoubtedly a factor, but just how the increasing extremes – heat waves, droughts and floods, sometimes one on top of the other – are related can be bewildering to the public and policymakers. As a climate scientist, I’ve been working on these issues for more than four decades, and my new book, “The changing flow of energy through the climate system,” details the causes, feedbacks and impacts. Let’s take a closer look at how climate change and natural weather patterns like La Niña influence what we’re seeing around the world today. The June-August 2022 global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit...

The summer of 2022 started with a historic flood in Montana, brought on by heavy rain and melting snow, that tore up roads and caused large areas of Yellowstone National Park to be evacuated. It ended with a record-breaking heat wave in California and much of the West that pushed the power grid to the breaking point, causing blackouts, followed by a tropical storm that set rainfall records in southern California. A typhoon flooded coastal Alaska, and a hurricane hit Puerto Rico with more than 30 inches of rain. In between, wildfires raged through California, Arizona and New Mexico on the background of a megadrought in Southwestern U.S. that has been more severe than anything the region has experienced in at least 1,200 years. Near Albuquerque, New Mexico, a five-mile stretch of the Rio Grande ran dry for the first time in 40 years. Persistent heat waves lingered over many parts of the country, setting temperature records. At the same time, during a period of five weeks between...

Hundreds of industrial facilities with toxic pollutants are in Hurricane Milton’s path as it heads toward Florida, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded communities across the Southeast. Milton, expected to make landfall as a major hurricane late on Oct. 9, is bearing down on boat and spa factories along Florida’s west-central coast, along with the rubber, plastics and fiberglass manufacturers that supply them. Many of these facilities use tens of thousands of registered contaminants each year, including toluene, styrene and other chemicals known to have adverse effects on the central nervous system with prolonged exposure. Farther inland, hundreds more manufacturers that use and house hazardous chemicals onsite lie along the Interstate 4 and Interstate 75 corridors and their feeder roads. And many are in the path of the storm’s intense winds and heavy rainfall. Black dots indicate facilities in EPA’s...

Atmospheric rivers – those long, narrow bands of water vapor in the sky that bring heavy rain and storms to the U.S. West Coast and many other regions – are shifting toward higher latitudes, and that’s changing weather patterns around the world. The shift is worsening droughts in some regions, intensifying flooding in others, and putting water resources that many communities rely on at risk. When atmospheric rivers reach far northward into the Arctic, they can also melt sea ice, affecting the global climate. In a new study published in Science Advances, University of California, Santa Barbara, climate scientist Qinghua Ding and I show that atmospheric rivers have shifted about 6 to 10 degrees toward the two poles over the past four decades. Atmospheric rivers on the move Atmospheric rivers aren’t just a U.S West Coast thing. They form in many parts of the world and provide over half of the mean annual runoff in these regions, including the U.S. Southeas...

The trauma of natural disasters doesn’t end when the storm or wildfire is gone, or even when communities are being put back together and homes have been rebuilt. For many people, being displaced by a disaster has long-term consequences that often aren’t obvious or considered in disaster aid decisions. We study public policy and disaster response. To get a better understanding of the ongoing challenges disaster victims face – and how officials can respond more effectively – we analyzed U.S. Census Bureau surveys that ask people nationwide about their disaster displacement experiences, as well as their stress and anxiety. The results show how recovery from disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes and flooding involves more than rebuilding, and how already vulnerable groups are at the greatest risk of harm. Millions are displaced every year The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey has been continually collecting data on people’s so...