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The costs of inaction on climate change keep rising — an additional $2.5 billion a year in just U.S. flood damage. A study published this week found that from 1988-2017, increased rainfall led to a total of $75 billion in damage.
Why this Matters: Flooding is one of the most common and expensive natural disasters and will only go up in the years ahead.
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This year we shattered the record for the number of named storms over the course of the six months of hurricane season with 30 — we exceeded the previous record by four. There were so many storms that we ran out of names and went deep into the Greek alphabet, which is what happens when we use up all the typical ones.
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By David Helvarg & Jason Scorse Like millions of Americans, Delaware’s Vice President Joe Biden and his family love the coast. They spend their summers visiting their family beach house in a typical Delaware shore town with a boardwalk, small shops, bars, and restaurants. Its expansive beaches attract countless families, the adjacent state park is […]
Continue Reading 968 wordsThe extreme weather events this summer keep piling up. Phoenix set a record for the most number of days over 110 degrees in a year with 35 — so far as of yesterday. Plus a derecho, which is akin to an inland hurricane, swept 700 miles across the midwest Monday.
Why This Matters: President Trump is trying to remove $50 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to pay for needed unemployment benefits he unilaterally ordered. Given the increased number of hurricanes predicted (a new storm is forming in the Atlantic), it seems like a particularly bad time to raid FEMA’s emergency funds.
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Hurricane Isaias, while only a category 1 (low strength) storm, caused great damage along the coast of the Carolinas and inland up the I-95 corridor, with several people killed, leaving nearly 3 million people without power, and causing widespread flooding necessitating water rescues up the Eastern seaboard all the way from Myrtle Beach, SC to Philadelphia, CNN reported last night.
Why This Matters: Sea level rise and coastal flooding are some of today’s toughest climate challenges. While the gut instinct may be to “build that wall,” in the case of the ocean, walls and other “hardened” structures only make matters worse.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced late last week that it will triple its operational weather and climate supercomputing capacity, and double its storage and interconnect speed, thanks to the installation of a pair of new Cray systems in Manassas, Virginia and Phoenix, Arizona in the next two years.
Why This Matters: The National Weather Service’s dedicated forecasters and NOAA’s weather satellites provide a great service to the country in terms of reliable daily and weekly forecasts at bargain-basement prices.
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