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Und a
new studyThis suggests that flooding will cost the US more in the future, around 26% more by 2050, and that people of color will be the ones to pay the brunt.
The study was published Monday in Nature Climate Change. It found that flooding costs in the US will rise from $32 to $43 billion today to $43 billion by 2050. Similar to
Many aspects of climate crisisThe flood risk change won’t affect everyone equally.
Researchers have found that severe flooding is disproportionately affecting low income White communities in the Appalachian Region, especially in West Virginia. The study shows that the risk shifts disproportionately towards primarily Black communities along both the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts over the next 30 year.
“Not everyone is carrying the same burden here,” Oliver Wing (lead author of the study, chief research officer at Fathom and flood modeling group Fathom) told CNN. “As flooding patterns change and the climate changes, it’s basically telling African American communities to bear greater burdens again — there’s a fundamental social injustice issue there.”
The climate crisis is escalating
Water cycleThis makes dry periods more dry and wetter. This is due to sea level rise which then leads to storm surges that are higher along the coasts. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 dumped more than 60inches of rain in Texas and caused an 8-foot storm wave along the coast. Afterward,
Researchers notedIt was
Communities of colorHarvey
The most significant impact. The study’s authors acknowledged that there is a strong correlation between climate crisis risk and flood risk.
population growth Flooding will have a greater impact on rising costs of flooding. They claim it’s yet another reason why policymakers must be vigilant.
Put more emphasis on adaptation• Adapting communities to climate change and making them more resilient to extreme weather.
Beth Tellman, co-founder of the analytics firm
Cloud to StreetThe study’s non-participant, however, stated that she believes the best outcome of the research is its ability to pinpoint which areas of the US are most at risk.
Tellman said that CNN’s specificity allowed them to pinpoint who will be affected. “It’s also the confidence they had in pointing out the differences in the causes and population growth, due to the improvements they’ve made in their models, that’s important.” This level of detail helps us to understand the best investments and policies.
Research by First Street Foundation last year, whose flood hazard modeling was used in this study, revealed that
25% of the critical infrastructureThe US is at risk of being inoperable because of flooding. It published research recently that showed that businesses are expected to collectively invest approximately $2.5 billion.
Millions of dollars in lost daysFlooding alone will be a major problem in the coming years.
Monday’s study “adds a greater understanding of flood risks by bringing in population characteristics, tying those as an extra dimension to the overall threat and economic implications, that we generally research at First Street,” Jeremy Porter said to CNN. Porter is a coauthor of the study, and the chief research officer of First Street.
Additional to
Transitioning away from fossil fuelsWing stated that adaptation measures are crucial given the speed at which climate change is progressing — and that policymakers need to invest in marginalized communities in order to help them adapt.
He said, “Even if decarbonization were instantaneous, if it was just stopped all together in some crazy universe, then most things we projected would remain unaffected.” “These changes we’re projecting are fundamentally climate-related and no decarbonization will stop them.”
Wing states that it all boils down, Wing says, to large investments in adaptation.
He said, “We must get these communities the resources necessary to adapt. That’s a problem that policymakers have to solve.” They must ensure that they are giving the communities we highlight in this document the resources to adapt to this risk. They bear a heavy burden right now and into the future.
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