“We are starting to roll more and more double sixes than we should.” Federal Agencies Struggle to Keep Up with Costs “It’s taking the natural ‘weather dice,’ where there is always a chance of naturally rolling a double six, which is an extreme heat wave, wildfire, or hurricane event, and loading them against us,” she said. The rise of global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities that increase greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere is “weighting the dice against us,” as Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and co-director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, puts it. Sea level rise is increasing the flood risk in many areas during high tides and storm surges. The ocean poured through the streets of Scituate, Massachusetts, during a storm on March 2. At the same time, more people are moving into harm’s way in forested areas, raising the risks for wildfire damage, and into coastal and low-lying areas at risk of flooding. Global warming is exacerbating several types of extreme weather events, including extreme rainfall, droughts, heat waves and longer wildfire seasons with more intense fires, Smith said. NOAA doesn’t quantify the connection between global warming and disasters in its annual disaster report, but its scientists note other research that is making those connections. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have been since 2005, and the top five have been the last five years. NOAA reported that 2018 was the fourth-warmest year on record globally, with the average global temperature 1.42☏ (0.79☌) above the 20th Century average. “Where we build, how we build, and climate change” are the three leading factors for the increasing number of costly disasters, he said. The future is being more and more defined by extreme events.” “2016, 20 have all been near record levels as far as extreme weather and climate events,” Smith said.
wildfires in a single year, a record that was set just last year, said Adam Smith, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who oversees the federal government’s tally of billion-dollar weather events.Įxtreme rain and hail storms in the nation’s midsection, tornadoes in the Southeast, wildfires in the West and drought in the Southwest all ran up costs in property damaged and crops and lives lost. Damage from the fires surpassed $18 billion, the previous record for all U.S. Then, in November, the Camp Fire erupted in northern California and swept through the town of Paradise, killing at least 86 people and destroying about 14,000 homes, making it the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history. North Carolina’s governor said the storm also caused nearly $17 billion in damage in that state alone when it stalled over the coast in September, bringing 30 inches of rain in some areas and sending rivers over their banks and into towns and homes. Hurricane Florence was blamed for 53 of those deaths.
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